Madman's Monster

by Michael Louis Weinberger

  She looked at Larson without saying a word, but slowly licked her lips, while uttering a satisfied sigh and a slightly coquettish smile .

  Larson blanched, turning away from us and back to where Rogers was laying on the cot, "What did you find out?" he asked, staring at the wall of the walk-in refrigerator.

  I watched him fighting to regain control, and said, "The girl's name is Pha Lomsah and her mother worked at the club as a dancer and bar girl."

  "She was a whore?"

  "The mother?" I asked, "Yes. Apparently she had indebted herself to the club, meaning the Madame, due to her particular taste for "Ya Ba", which I gather is a meth and caffeine combination and a particularly addictive drug of choice here in Thailand. The mother got pregnant by one of her clients and hid the pregnancy until it was too expensive for her to afford an abortion. The child was born an addict and would have been put in an orphanage if not for the mother's family who somehow found out about the pregnancy. The baby went back to the mother's village to be cared for and, apparently, they did a pretty good job of raising her. She grew into a beautiful little girl, and when the Madame found a picture that had been sent to the mother from the family, she saw a way to make more money."

  Lei walked around to where Rogers was lying and peered down hungrily at the vulnerable man. Larson saw her look and rested his hand on the butt of his holstered .44 Magnum, as a warning, without trying to complete the draw.

  "Lei," I said calmly, to catch her attention, and she looked back at me, and noticing the barely perceptible shake of my head.

  She looked back down to Rogers and said to me, "Do you feel it too?"

  I hated the truth of it, but as I looked at Rogers lying defenseless with a bloody bandage over his wound I nodded my reply. The "IT" Lei’s question was about involved the ‘temptation’ that Roger's blood, and his weakened state, was presenting to our most primal urges. It was like looking at your all-time favorite dessert, and having trouble resisting the urge to have just a taste, even though you aren't really hungry.

  Lei backed off but Larson saw what I had done, "What are you people?"

  I'm not sure why I answered so abruptly, and maybe it was the guilt, I just don't know, but I blew out an exasperated breath, "I think you know fully well what we are by now. You're just having trouble accepting it."

  Larson looked from me, to Lei and back to me before he shook his head and muttered, "Fucking bullshit."

  I thought he needed a moment but he quickly followed with, "I assume you found out more?"

  I nodded and continued, "The Madame was the one supplying the girls at the club with the Ya Ba and she withheld it from the mother until she agreed to sell the girl in exchange for an ongoing, lifetime supply of the drug. A week later armed men arrived at the village, showed the "contract" to the family, and took the girl away."

  "Just like that?" Larson asked.

  "Seems like," I answered, "I guess Rogers was right about this country, and it not being an uncommon thing here."

  Larson began desperately searching for a place to sit down and finally opted for the floor when he couldn't find anything more suitable.

  "So what's the connection to Zach?"

  I hesitated. I was hoping to figure out a way to soften the blow that I was about to deliver, but nothing had come to me, so I just laid it all out, "Well, we'd be skipping ahead a bit, but it seems that Zach bought her from the club for his own private use."

  Larson shot to his feet, "NO!"

  I jumped back as the man was gesturing at me with his hands, without realizing that he had drawn his pistol and didn’t understand that he was holding a gun.

  "I'm sorry man," I quickly said, while holding my hands up in surrender, "but that was the deal the Madame had made. Local law enforcement even signed off their approval of the sale and provided all of the necessary documentation, just so he could take the child back to America as her legal guardian."

  Larson frowned at my reaction, and finally noticed the gun in his hand. He considered the weapon briefly before re-holstering it.

  "There has to be more to it than that."

  Lei was indignant, "Why?"

  Larson looked up and the hostility was gone from his eyes. He shrugged his shoulders and said simply, "Because it's Zach."

  Silence filled the room until Larson finally asked quietly, "Did you find out where the mother is?"

  I frowned, "Yes?"

  "And?"

  "She overdosed about a month after selling her daughter. They found her body in one of the hotels, next to a similarly dead foreigner."

  Larson cursed and kicked at the ground before asking, "Anything on the "John"?"

  "Nope. Guy was clean for anything other than being a drug addict and whore monger."

  The room remained silent for a bit as Larson clenched his fists in apparent frustration.

  Finally he said, "Okay, so where do we go from here?"

  Lei spoke up before I could answer, "I'm going to find the ladies room. Let me know what you guys decide."

  Larson watched her walk out of the room and seemed to be in total confusion then turned to me, "Decide?"

  I nodded, "Seems we have two leads we can follow. One is going to be tricky and very dangerous, but should pay off if we make it out alive. The other may be a wild goose chase, but the risk seems pretty low."

  "Tell me about the risky one."

  I took a deep breath and, metaphorically, jumped…

  "The men who attacked us at Rogers' place..."

  Larson cut in, "The dead ones?"

  I rolled my eyes just a little bit, "Yes, the dead ones. They would have been collected by now and taken to the morgue. If we can get into the morgue there will be files, containers with personal effects and..."

  Larson's face dropped, "You haven't heard?"

  I didn't register what he had said right away, and kept on telling him my plan, "...maybe some distinguishing marks on their...what?"

  "You haven't seen the news?"

  "Um...no?"

  Larson pulled his cellular phone out of his pocket, tapped the screen a few times and then handed it to me. On the screen was a video with a female voice speaking in Thai talking about the building burning in the background. There were scenes of firefighters spraying water from their hoses and emergency crews carrying people to be taken away in waiting ambulances.

  "If there were subtitles you'd read that somebody set off a fire bomb in the hospital, and the police think ground zero was in, or near, the morgue.

  I snorted derisively, "Someone's covering their tracks."

  "Yep." I thought for a second before asking, "Didn't Rogers' say something about the Khmer Rouge? Could they be responsible?"

  Larson shook his head, "They are pretty quiet these days, although they do hire out for mercenary work, and are behind the occasional kidnapping for ransom. Their organization is more or less dead, otherwise."

  I sighed, "Well that rules out plan "A". On to plan B."

  Larson squinted his eyes as a thought seemed to occur to him.

  "The family."

  I inclined my head, "What about them?"

  "Did you find out where they are?"

  "Yes."

  "We should go there." I smiled as Larson had pretty much described plan "B."

  "Yes..." I agreed, "Yes we should do that."

  Chapter 28

  There was no paved road to the village, and what passed for the dirt trail that we were taking was more like a snow ski mogul run, if you replaced the snow with mud. Between getting occasionally stuck in the deep mud, and bouncing hard enough to be concerned that the borrowed Jeep's suspension wouldn't stand up to the stress, we were all relieved when the jungle decided that the vehicle would go no further. I never thought that I'd actually look forward to walking through such a wild and foreign landscape, but I was on the verge of motion sickness by the time we left the vehicle, and moving on my own two feet immediately started to clear my head.

  Before we
left Lei had taken the opportunity to go shopping, and somehow managed to put together some appropriate clothing for us to wear on our trek through the jungle. They weren't military fatigues as much as tourist camo for camping, but they had the appropriate earth tones of khaki and olive green that would blend in to the surroundings if our situation called for it.

  Larson provided the munitions as well as the Jeep, which he said belonged to Rogers', and he took the lead as we headed into the dense dark jungle. After about fifteen minutes Larson stopped and pulled out a handheld device that looked like a large cell phone.

  "GPS says we are about a mile and a half from the coordinates on the map. Normally I'd say it'd take us the better part of half an hour to make it there, but in this terrain, we'll be lucky to cover it in two hours."

  "No sense waiting around then," Lei chimed in with mock cheeriness, "Lead on!"

  It turned out that it wasn't simply a case of a two-hour hike through the woods. Each of us ended up knee deep in the mud at one point or another, and it threatened to suck the boots right off our feet as we pulled ourselves out time after time. We also had to cross over several fast moving yet thankfully shallow creeks, and even climb down one short waterfall before we found some partially open terrain.

  Larson stopped us as we reached the level ground and checked the GPS again, "Looks as though it will be just beyond the next tree line."

  "How is it there could be a clearing like this in the middle of the jungle?" Lei asked while removing a boot to let out some of the accumulated river water."

  "Don't!" Larson called out to her, but it was too late and Lei froze as she turned to look at him while holding her boot upside down.

  "What?"

  Larson grumbled something about amateurs, before he said with a certain degree of restraint in his voice, "You should have waited, now your feet will begin to swell and you may not get that boot back on comfortably."

  Lei hurriedly tried to slip the book back on, but it was clear that Larson was right. She managed, but had to loosen the laces significantly before she appeared only partially satisfied with the way the boot fit.

  "Should we eat now or wait until we get to the village?" I asked Larson, while Lei was struggling with her boot.

  He thought for a second, "Well, we don't really know what kind of reception we are going to get in the village. I think we should eat some of the trail mix you guys brought, and maybe even try for a catnap. Better to be as fresh as possible when we get there."

  "You expecting trouble?" Lei asked as she stomped down hard on the boot heel.

  Larson ignored her animated display, "No, but we are arriving unannounced. These people could leave at any time and join the modern world in Bangkok, or some other city, but they choose to live out here in the sticks. To me that means they don't want any part of the modern life, and they may feel as though we are intruding. People never react well to having their domain intruded upon, so respectful caution is probably warranted."

  It was just then that we heard a gunshot "boom" in the distance.

  All three of us spun to look in the direction where the shot had sounded. It seemed to all of us as though the shot had been fired at the distant tree line, and it was also in the same general direction as the village. We were facing that direction as we looked stupidly at each other, and then all three of us broke into a run toward the source of the shot.

  Chapter 29

  Timberland had barely gotten the taste of smoke out of his mouth, since igniting the firebomb in the police morgue, before it was time for him to go back to work. The whole snatch and grab at the morgue ended up being simple enough. He and his team had simply bribed the usual policemen into letting them enter through the rear doors, that were normally reserved for the ambulances arriving with patients, or in this case corpses. The dead were normally taken into the morgue for autopsy, storage, and eventually were picked up by the doctor who served as the city's coroner. Of course, no one had realized it had been their intent to set the station ablaze, but sharing that information hadn't been in Timberland's plans. The fire was supposed to be a lesson to the police, letting them know that they needed to start holding up their end of the arrangement. In any case, the fire would char the corpses beyond any reliable identification and whatever information may have been gleaned from any completed autopsies would be destroyed when the fire reached the computer terminals in the adjoining office, so the mission was accomplished.

  Now it was time to see to Whelan's missing guinea pig. Timberland planned to raze the village in order to see if Whelan's wayward pet was still holed up inside. They hadn't far to go as the village was only about five miles from their camp, so the team ran the entire distance. Truth be told, this was exactly what his people really needed, something more primitive and able to take them back to their roots, as opposed to a scrupulously planned and detailed raid. They were simply going to the village to seek their prey, and kill everyone who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

  There were eleven of them in all and they encircled the village as they silently arrived. Eyes darting back and forth, targeting every soul that moved within their kill zone as the excitement of the blood sport that was about to come threatened to overwhelm their ability to remain civilized. Timberland could feel it too and knew that he couldn't hold his people back for long. They lived for the hunt. They lived for the kill. They were predators, and predators need prey.

  Timberland watched as a middle-aged woman swept dust and debris out of what passed for her home. He would be the first to go in, the first to kill. It was his responsibility, as much as his right, and he focused on the woman who would fall beneath him, as the one to die at his hands before all others.

  A quick whisper into his mouthpiece, and Timberland confirmed that the rest of his team were in place and ready.

  "On my mark, breech the village."

  Timberland readied himself to burst from the jungle and onto the woman before she could let out any sound of alarm. He had expected her to stay in her doorway, but she turned as if to go back inside. Then she bent over, with the sheer fabric of her dress clinging to her body, outlining the curves of her legs and waist.

  Timberland smiled at the sight and thought, maybe there was more he could do beyond simply killing the woman. He ran from the tree line in a crouch and was closing the distance to the woman, when a child screamed from the other side of the village. The woman stood up quickly and turned to look at what was causing the commotion, but her eyes opened unnaturally wide when she saw Timberland coming at her, now at a full run with a K-bar in his hand.

  He pushed for more speed, but instinctively ducked and rolled at the sound of a gunshot being fired. A bullet struck the woman in the chest and cut off her scream in an instant, and she was dead before her body hit the ground.

  Timberland cursed and pulled his own Glock 23 from its holster. He had hoped to keep this entire exercise a quiet endeavor. Opting for the use of knives as opposed to guns was a kind of personal preference that he and the rest of his team shared. It was so much more satisfying to be able to look into the prey's eyes and really, truly feel the blade as it parted flesh and took life. Hearing the screams and moans undulate in a cacophony of sound as the blade is pulled free, and thrust back in over and over again drove directly into the core of what it meant to him to be a hunter and predator. Now that the scenario had lost the element of silence there was no reason to be quiet anymore and Timberland turned to see the rest of his people working their way inward from the perimeter they had created and it looked like all of them had abandoned their knives for their pistols.

  Some of the villagers ran into their huts, while others had stuck their heads out just to see what was happening. A pair of older women began to corral the children and drive them into their various living quarters, while men ran toward the fallen woman carrying an assortment of sharp farming implements and machetes.

  Timberland couldn’t believe how quickly the scene had deteriorated i
nto chaos, but it really didn't matter. They were here to kill everyone in the village, yet he hoped his people would remember they needed a couple of the villagers to question regarding Whelan's pet, just in case they didn't locate him in the village. Timberland fired a single round into each of two men who were running at him. One was holding a machete and instantly crumpled in a lifeless heap while the other continued to charge with what appeared to be a gardening hoe and took the round to his thigh. Other gunshots resounded and more people screamed as they feel into the dirt crying out in pain at the wounds the 40 caliber handguns were inflicting, when a sound echoed in Timberland's earpiece that he hadn't expected. One of his team screamed first in terror and then in pain before going silent leaving only static in the earpiece.

  "Who was that?" one of the team called out.

  "What just happened?" another one responded.

  Timberland immediately took control, "Keep it together people. We know who and what we are up against. Looks like our target is still here. Pair up and complete your sweeps. All other targets are now expendable."

  Timberland felt more than he heard the heavy footfalls behind him and he tried to spin into a shooter's crouch way too late, as an enormous blur slammed into him, lifting him off the ground and carrying him through the wall and into the nearest hut. The breath was driven from his chest, and the taste of blood filled his mouth as he crashed down through a bamboo table and into the ground.

  The gun flew from his hand and he made no attempt to retrieve it as he felt for the knife at his side. He could still hear the sounds of his team members in his earpiece running to his aide as he pulled the blade from the sheath and drove the point into whatever was wrapped around his waist. The knife tip found it's mark and penetrated deeply into flesh causing the tightness around his core to release the pressure.

  Whatever had him let go and Timberland rolled away to gain some distance between himself and his foe. It was, of course, Whelan's pet project, nearly seven feet tall and well over three hundred chiseled pounds of primal force. Timberland wasn't afraid, but instead felt the rush of adrenaline burst through him as he faced his enormous foe. He had his K-bar and years of training in hand to hand combat, while Whelan’s "Pet" had nothing beyond his size and hardened skin. Timberland also knew he had reinforcements who would be beside him in seconds, while this medical monstrosity he hated stood alone.