"I've worked alone before."
23
Altruism
"Where am I?" Doris Brown asked in a barely understandable voice.
"Well, you're in my house," Sandy answered. She sat in the corner of the guest bedroom, switching off the reading light and setting down the paperback she'd been reading for the past few hours.
"How did I get here?"
"A friend brought you here. I'm a nurse. The doctor is downstairs fixing breakfast. How are you feeling?"
"Terrible." Her eyes closed. "My head ... "
"That's normal, but I know it's bad." Sandy stood and came over, touching the girl's forehead. No fever, which was good news. Next she felt for a pulse. Strong, regular, though still a touch fast. From the way her eyes were screwed shut, Sandy guessed that the extended barbiturate hangover must have been awful, but that too was normal. The girl smelled from sweating and vomiting. They'd tried to keep her clean, but that had been a losing battle, if a not terribly important one compared to the rest. Until now, perhaps. Doris's skin was sallow and slack, as though the person inside had shrunk. She must have lost ten or fifteen pounds since arriving, and while that wasn't an entirely bad thing, she was so weak that she'd not yet noticed the restraints holding her hands, feet, and waist in place.
"How long?"
"Almost a week." Sandy took a sponge and wiped her face. "You gave us quite a scare." Which was an understatement. No less than seven convulsions, the second of which had almost panicked both nurse and physician, but number seven--a mild one--was eighteen hours behind them now, and the patient's vital signs were stabilized. With luck that phase of her recovery was behind them. Sandy let Doris have some water.
"Thank you," Doris said in a very small voice. "Where's Billy and Rick?"
"I don't know who they are," Sandy replied. It was technically correct. She'd read the articles in the local papers, always stopping short of reading any names. Nurse O'Toole was telling herself that she didn't really know anything. It was a useful internal defense against feelings so mixed that even had she taken the time to figure things out, she knew she would have only confused herself all the more. It was not a time for bare facts. Sarah had convinced her of that. It was a time for riding with the shape of events, not the substance. "Are they the ones who hurt you?"
Doris was nude except for the restraints and the oversized diapers used on patients unable to manage their bodily functions. It was easier to treat her that way. The horrid marks on her breasts and torso were fading now. What had been ugly, discrete marks of blue and black and purple and red were fading to poorly defined areas of yellow-brown as her body struggled to heal itself. She was young, Sandy told herself, and while not yet healthy, she could become so. Enough to heal, perhaps, inside and outside. Already her systemic infections were responding to the massive doses of antibiotics. The fever was gone, and her body could now turn to the more mundane repair tasks.
Doris turned her head and opened her eyes. "Why are you doing this for me?"
That answer was an easy one: "I'm a nurse, Miss Brown. It's my job to take care of sick people."
"Billy and Rick," she said next, remembering again. Memory for Doris was a variable and spotty thing, mainly the recollection of pain.
"They're not here," O'Toole assured her. She paused before going on, and to her surprise found satisfaction in the words: "I don't think they'll be bothering you again." There was almost comprehension in the patient's eyes, Sandy thought. Almost. And that was encouraging.
"I have to go. Please--" She started to move and then noticed the restraints.
"Okay, wait a minute." Sandy removed the straps. "You think you can stand today?"
" ... try," she groaned. Doris rose perhaps thirty degrees before her body betrayed her. Sandy got her sitting up, but the girl couldn't quite make her head sit straight on her neck. Standing her up was even harder, but it wasn't that far to the bathroom, and the dignity of making it there was worth the pain and the effort for her patient. Sandy sat her down there, holding her hand. She took the time to dampen a washcloth and do her face.
"That's a step forward," Sarah Rosen observed from the door. Sandy turned and smiled by way of communicating the patient's condition. They put a robe on her before bringing her back to the bedroom. Sandy changed the linen first, while Sarah got a cup of tea into the patient.
"You're looking much better today, Doris," the physician said, watching her drink.
"I feel awful."
"That's okay, Doris. You have to feel awful before you can start to feel better. Yesterday you weren't feeling much of anything. Think you can try some toast?"
"So hungry."
"Another good sign," Sandy noted. The look in her eyes was so bad that both doctor and nurse could feel the skull-rending headache which today would be treated only with an ice pack. They'd spent a week leaching the drugs from her system, and this wasn't the time for adding new ones. "Lean your head back."
Doris did that, resting her head on the back of the overstuffed chair Sandy had once bought at a garage sale. Her eyes were closed and her limbs so weak that her arms merely rested on the fabric while Sarah handled the individual slices of dry toast. The nurse took a brush and started working on her patient's hair. It was filthy and needed washing, but just getting it straightened out would help, she thought. Medical patients put an amazing amount of stock in their physical appearance, and however odd or illogical it might seem to be, it was real, and therefore something which Sandy recognized as important. She was a little surprised by Doris's shudder a minute or so after she started.
"Am I alive?" The alarm in the question was startling.
"Very much so," Sarah answered, almost smiling at the exaggeration. She checked her blood pressure. "One twenty-two over seventy-eight."
"Excellent!" Sandy noted. It was the best reading all week.
"Pam..."
"What's that?" Sarah asked.
It took Doris a moment to go on, still wondering if this were life or death, and if the latter, what part of eternity she had found. "Hair ... when she was dead... brushed her hair."
Dear God, Sarah thought. Sam had related that one part of the postmortem report to her, morosely sipping a highball at their home in Green Spring Valley. He hadn't gone further than that. It hadn't been necessary. The photo on the front page of the paper had been quite sufficient. Dr. Rosen touched her patient's face as gently as she could.
"Doris, who killed Pam?" She thought that she could ask this without increasing the patient's pain. She was wrong.
"Rick and Billy and Burt and Henry... killed her... watching... " The girl started crying, and the racking sobs only magnified the shuddering waves of pain in her head. Sarah held back on the toast. Nausea might soon follow.
"They made you watch?"
"Yes ..." Doris's voice was like one from the grave.
"Let's not think about that now." Sarah's body shuddered with the kind of chill she associated with death itself as she stroked the girl's cheek.
"There!" Sandy said brightly, hoping to distract her. "That's much better."
"Tired."
"Okay, let's get you back to bed, dear." Both women helped her up. Sandy left the robe on her, setting an ice bag on her forehead. Doris faded off into sleep almost at once.
"Breakfast is on," Sarah told the nurse. "Leave the restraints off for now."
"Brushed her hair? What?" Sandy asked, heading down the stairs.
"I didn't read the report--"
"I saw the photo, Sarah--what they did to her--Pam, her name was, right?" Sandy was almost too tired to remember things herself.
"Yes. She was my patient, too," Dr. Rosen confirmed. "Sam said it was pretty bad. The odd thing, somebody brushed her hair out after she was dead, he told me that. I guess it was Doris who did it."
"Oh." Sandy opened the refrigerator and got milk for the morning coffee. "I see."
"I don't," Dr. Rosen said angrily. "I don't see how people can do tha
t. Another few months and Doris would have died. As it was, any closer--"
"I'm surprised you didn't admit her under a Jane Doe," Sandy observed.
"After what happened to Pam, taking a chance like that--and it would have meant--"
O'Toole nodded. "Yes, it would have meant endangering John. That's what I understand."
"Hmph?"
"They killed her friend and made her watch... the things they did to her... To them she was just a thing! ... Billy and Rick," Sandy said aloud, not quite realizing it.
"Burt and Henry," Sarah corrected. "I don't think the other two will be hurting anybody anymore." The two women shared a look, their eyes meeting across the breakfast table, their thoughts identical, though both were distantly shocked at the very idea of holding them, much less understanding them.
"Good."
"Well, we've shaken down every bum west of Charles Street," Douglas told his lieutenant. "We've had one cop cut--not seriously, but the wino is in for a long drying-out period at Jessup. A bunch have been puked on," he added with a smirk, "but we still don't know crap. He's not out there, Em. Nothing new in a week."
And it was true. The word had gotten out to the street, surprisingly slow but inevitable. Street pushers were being careful to the point of paranoia. That might or might not explain the fact that not a single one had lost his life in over a week.
"He's still out there, Tom."
"Maybe so, but he's not doing anything."
"In which case everything he did was to get Farmer and Grayson," Ryan noted with a look at the sergeant.
"You don't believe that."
"No, I don't, and don't ask me why, because I don't know why."
"Well, it would help if Charon could tell us something. He's been pretty good taking people down. Remember that bust he did with the Coast Guard?"
Ryan nodded. "That was a good one, but he's slowed down lately."
"So have we, Em," Sergeant Douglas pointed out. "The only thing we really know about this guy is that he's strong, he wears new sneaks, and he's white. We don't know age, weight, size, motive, what kind of car he drives."
"Motive. We know he's pissed about something. We know he's very good at killing. We know he's ruthless enough to kill people just to cover his own activities ... and he's patient." Ryan leaned back. "Patient enough to take time off?"
Tom Douglas had a more troubling idea. "Smart enough to change tactics."
That was a disturbing thought. Ryan considered it. What if he'd seen the shakedowns? What if he'd decided that you could only do one thing so long, and then you had to do something else? What if he'd developed information from William Grayson, and that information was now taking him in other directions--out of town, even? What if they'd never know, never close these cases? That would be a professional insult to Ryan, who hated leaving cases open, but he had to consider it. Despite dozens of field interviews, they had not turned up so much as a single witness except for Virginia Charles, and she'd been sufficiently traumatized that her information was scarcely believable--and contradicted the one really useful piece of forensic evidence they had. The suspect had to be taller than she had said, had to be younger, and sure as hell was as strong as an NFL linebacker. He wasn't a wino, but had chosen to camouflage himself as one. You just didn't see people like that. How did you describe a stray dog?
"The Invisible Man," Ryan said quietly, finally giving the case a name. "He should have killed Mrs. Charles. You know what we've got here?"
Douglas snorted. "Somebody I don't want to meet alone."
"Three groups to take Moscow out?"
"Sure, why not?" Zacharias replied. "It's your political leadership, isn't it? It's a huge communications center, and even if you get the Politburo out, they'll still get most of your military and political command and control--"
"We have ways to get our important people out," Grishanov objected out of professional and national pride.
"Sure." Robin almost laughed, Grishanov saw. Part of him was insulted, but on reflection he was pleased with himself that the American colonel felt that much at ease now. "Kolya, we have things like that, too. We have a real ritzy shelter set up in West Virginia for Congress and all that. The 1st Helicopter Squadron is at Andrews, and their mission is to get VIPs the heck out of Dodge--but guess what? The durned helicopters can't hop all the way to the shelter and back without refueling on the return leg. Nobody thought about that when they selected the shelter, because that was a political decision. Guess what else? We've never tested the evacuation system. Have you tested yours?"
Grishanov sat down next to Zacharias, on the floor, his back against the dirty concrete wall. Nikolay Yevgeniyevich just looked down and shook his head, having learned yet more from the American. "You see? You see why I say we'll never fight a war? We're alike! No, Robin, we've never tested it, we've never tried to evacuate Moscow since I was a child in the snow. Our big shelter is at Zhiguli. It's a big stone--not a mountain, like a big--bubble? I don't know the word, a huge circle of stone from the center of the earth."
"Monolith? Like Stone Mountain in Georgia?"
Grishanov nodded. There was no harm in giving secrets to this man, was there? "The geologists say it is immensely strong, and we tunneled into it back in the late 1950s. I've been there twice. I helped supervise the air-defense office when they were building it. We expect--this is the truth, Robin--we expect to get our people there by train. "
"It won't matter. We know about it. If you know where it is, you can take it out, just a matter of how many bombs you put there." The American had a hundred grams of vodka in him. "Probably the Chinese do, too. But they'll go for Moscow anyway, especially if it's a surprise attack."
"Three groups?"
"That's how I'd do it." Robin's feet straddled an air-navigation chart of the southeastern Soviet Union. "Three vectors, from these three bases, three aircraft each, two to carry the bombs, one a protective jammer. Jammer takes the lead. Bring in all three groups on line, like, spaced wide like this." He traced likely courses on the map. "Start your penetration descent here, take 'em right into these valleys, and by the time they hit the plains--"
"Steppes," Kolya corrected.
"They're through your first line of defense, okay? They're smoking in low, like three hundred feet. Maybe they don't even jam at first. Maybe you have one special group, even. The guys you really train."
"What do you mean, Robin?"
"You have night flights into Moscow, airliners, I mean?"
"Of course."
"Well, what say you take a Badger, and you leave the strobes on, okay, and maybe you have little glow lights down the fuselage that you can turn on and off--you know, like windows? Hey, I'm an airliner."
"You mean?"
"It's something we looked at once. There's a squadron with the light kits still at... Pease, I think. That used to be the job--the B-47s based in England. If we ever decided like you guys were going to go after us, from intelligence or something, okay? You gotta have a plan for everything. That was one of ours. We called it JUMPSHOT. Probably in the dead files now, that was one of LeMay's specials. Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev--and Zhiguli. Three birds targeted there, two weapons each. Decap your whole political and military command structure. Hey look, I'm an airliner!"
It would work, Grishanov thought with an eerie chill. The right time of year, the right time of day... the bomber comes in on a regularly scheduled airliner route. Even in a crisis, the very illusion of something normal would be like a touchstone while people looked for the unusual. Maybe an air-defense squadron would put an aircraft up, a young pilot standing night alert while the senior men slept. He'd close to a thousand meters or so, but at night ... at night your mind saw what the brain told it to see. Lights on the fuselage, well, of course it's an airliner. What bomber would be lit up? That was one op-plan the KGB had never tumbled to. How many more gifts would Zacharias give him?
"Anyway, if I was John Chinaman, that's one option. If they don't have much im
agination, and go with a straight attack, over this terrain, yeah, they can do that. Probably one group is diversionary. They have a real target, too, but short of Moscow. They fly in high, off vector. About this far out"--he swept a hand across the map--"they make a radical turn and hit something, you can decide what's important, lots of good targets there. Chances are your fighters keep after them, right?"
"Da. " They'd think the inbound bombers were turning away for a secondary target.
"The other two groups loop around from another direction, and they smoke in low. One of 'em's gonna make it, too. We've played it out a million times, Kolya. We know your radars, we know your bases, we know your airplanes, we know how you train. You're not that hard to beat. And the Chinese, they studied with you, right? You taught them. They know your doctrine and everything."
It was how he said it. No guile at all. And this was a man who had penetrated the North Vietnamese air defenses over eighty times. Eighty times.
"So how do I--"
"Defend against it?" Robin shrugged, bending down to examine the chart again. "I need better maps, but first thing, you examine the passes one at a time. You remember that a bomber isn't a fighter. He can't maneuver all that great, especially low. Most of what he's doing is keeping the airplane from crunching into the ground, right? I don't know about you, but that makes me nervous. He's going to pick a valley he can maneuver in. Especially at night. You put your fighters there. You put ground radars there. You don't need big sexy ones. That's just a bell-ringer. Then you plan to catch him when he comes out."
"Move the defenses back? I can't do that!"
"You put your defenses where they can work, Kolya, not to follow a dotted line on a piece of paper. Or do you like eating Chinese all that much? That's always been a weakness with you people. By the way, it also shortens your lines, right? You save money and assets. Next thing, you remember that the other guy, he knows how pilots think, too--a kill is a kill, right? Maybe there's decoy groups designed to draw your people out, okay? We have scads of radar lures we plan to use. You have to allow for that. You control your people. They stay in their sectors unless you have a really good reason to move them...."
Without Remorse (1993) Page 46