I got up and felt my way out and locked them in, safe for the night. They'd had a very bad day, but they were safe for the night. Luck had run against them. John Wayne had deserted them.
I found two big flashlights, camp lanterns. I did not want to fool with the generator. I didn't want to listen to it. I went down to the creek with soap and towels, aimed the lanterns, and bathed and scrubbed in the black slide of ice water. I dressed in fresh coveralls, went to a trailer where nobody lived and where nobody had died, and rolled up in three blankets rolled onto my clenched fist to ease the hollowness of my empty belly and slept twelve hours without dreaming, without waking, without, as far as I could tell, moving at ale
In the morning I was able to eat. Then I went collecting. I looked for books, notebooks, tape decks, tapes, letters, documents, money, identifica
The Green Ripper lion. Brother Persival had the team's petty cash in a lockbox in the bottom of his hanging locker. A1most thirty-srx thousand. It all fitted reasonably well into the double lining of my old duffel bag. I remembered the airplane and went back to the wreck and hunted until I found the flight log. It was damp with evaporating gasoline but legible. Dates, engine hours, destinations some in the clear, some in code. Passengers and freight carried. Clear and coded. Fuel consumption. Estimated payloads. Maybe somebody could decipher where it had been and thus find some of the rest of these little warrens of Brothers and Sisters waiting to be blooded. I found the flight log, but not the arm. I walked farther afield, looking for it. I studied the trees, looking up at the crotches and crevices. No arm. Not one. Anywhere.
There were very few documents. It was as if they had been ordered to keep noting personal. Everything I found fitted into one large suitcase from A1vor's cement house. It was black metal like those carried by immigrants in old movies.
I had washed out the van. It had not been in bad shape. The blankets had saved it. I put my duffel bag in the van. I put the suitcase in the van. In one of the travel trailers I had found a big shiny oldfashioned alarm clock. I took it into the warehouse. I did not go all the way through to where the bodies were. I tested the alarm. It was very loud. I had located one case of six rockets. I set the alarm for five hours in the future, which would make it six in the evening. I uncapped six rockets, aimed them into different parts of the storage piles, jammed them in firmly. I took off the little acoustic caps. Just turn the switches and tiptoe out. I looked and thought, then screwed the acoustic caps back on and put the rockets back in the case, walked out and threw the alarm clock as far as I could, relocked the warehouse, and le*.
I drove down to the gate, unlocked it, drove out, locked it behind me. The morning had been muggy. The afternoon was colder. I drove a black van with big gold crosses on the side. I tried to look pious and preoccupied. The second day of a brand-new year. I tried to hurry, but every time I looked at the speedometer, I was back down to thirty miles an hour. It seemed fast enough.
I found a big gas station near Ukiah. I got change from the office and placed the call to the memorized number.
It rang three times and a hushed voice, male, said, "Hello."
'~Was someone... was someone at this number trying to reach Travis McGee?"
"I can try to find out for you."
'If you find out they were, I can be reached at this number." I read it off the pay phone.
"If they were trying to reach you, they'll call back."
I had parked the van next to the phone booth. I
The Green Ripper sat where I could hear me ring. At four o'clock the man came out from the station. "Are you okay?"
"I'm waiting for a call."
"All this time?"
'Y'm waiting for a call."
He looked me over carefully. 'Lou sure you're all right?"
'Em fine. I'm fine."
After that he would come out of me building about every fifteen minutes and stare over at me.
At 6:10 P.M. the phone rang. I moved quickly and shut myself in the booth.
"Hello?"
"McGee?"
"Yes. Are you Max or Take?"
'~either. But I know what went on."
"Can you prove that?"
'If you can mink of a way, maybe I can."
'Y was with a friend. He stayed outside. We used a code."
"Hold on. I saw that in here somewhere. Here it is. The word hat. To mean a weapon. Bring your hat."
"Okay. I mink somebody better get here. I think Hey better get here fast. I keep kind of slipping off, in a funny way."
'~Where are you?"
"Near Ukiah, near an off ramp, near a Shell station. Ukiah, California."
'because you call, we should come?"
"I hope you're recording this, pal. Because I don't feel like going over it if you don't believe it. Brother Titus is dead. And Brother Persival and ten more of them. They're in a warehouse up in the hills. The warehouse is full of weapons, ammo, incendiaries, plastique, grenades, rockets. They were terrorists who trained all over the world and they "
"Hold it! Can you see a motel anywhere near you?"
I looked around. "Talmadge Lodge."
"You have cash?"
"Enough."
"Go there and check in. And wait."
'I'll use the name of Thomas McGraw. How long will I have to wait?"
"I'd guess until six tomorrow morning. Or seven. I want to get the two you met back in on this thing. They're... pretty far away."
There were nine of them, in three nondescript cars, and they did not want to waste any time sitting around chatting. They seemed to be under intense strain. I was in the lead car with Jake at the wheel, pointing out the way. Max leaned over from the back seat. "Why the hell did you come out here?"
"Why not?"
"People like you can screw everything up."
"So why didn't you get out here first?"
The Green Ripper
'It was way down the list. We'd have gotten around to it. We're understaffed. Jesus C hrist, McGee, each one of us is doing the work of three men. The government solution to a problem is throw money at it. So what do you do when you can't really mention the problem?"
"Why the big rush? Everything is still there."
Jake said, "We've gotten to too many places right after the moving men have cleaned it out."
I thought I had missed one turn, but I hadn't. I unlocked the gate, swung it open, and got back in. The three cars went barreling up the narrow steep road, sliding on the greasy turns. All the structures were there. The silence was there. I pointed out the building.
I unlocked the door for them and stepped back out of the way and let them go in. I went back and leaned on a car. In five minutes two of them came out, looking a little green. Max was one of them. After they breathed in some fresh air they went back in. Ten minutes later Max came out, another man following him with a notebook.
" and I want unmarked trucks up here, with secure drivers. The biggest that can make that last hill and the curves. They'll take the long way around from here to Fort Bragg and go into classified storage. Our people will look at the stuff there to see if there's anything new and different. Got that?"
"Got it."
Y want to sneak a helicopter in here big enough to fly out with eleven bodies. They should bring body bags and some graves registration people. Secure people, of course."
"Got it."
"I want them taken to Home Town fastest. I want a priority on those pix and prints they're taking in there. They should be about ready to give them to you, and then you can take off. Who's got that black tin suitcase?"
"It's in the trunk of Red's car."
"They'll fly back with us to Home Town, and when you're setting the other stuff up, make sure they get good people on E. and A. Take them off other stuff if necessary. Now read back, just the highlights."
"Mmm. Unmarked trucks, secure drivers, classified storage at Bragg. Bodies out on helicopter. Body bags and graves registration people, direct to Home Town. Priority on the pix and prints, and I take them in. Take black suitcase out with me... no, that goes with you. What I do is get Evaluation and Analysis primed to go when it gets there."
That was all. He went back into the warehouse. Max motioned to me, and we strolled across the flats. I told him I would show him where the airplane went in.
"So many of them," he said. "Jesus!"
"I know."
"Are you all right?"
The Green Ripper
'I don't know what the hell it is. Like some kind of combat fatigue. Look at my hand shake. It was a long time ago, and it an came back at once."
"You went kind of crazy?"
"No. Not like that. I was pretty calm, actually. I mean you go along and you figure the odds of doing this and the odds against doing that, and whatever you do, you make it sudden and final."
"You say three were in the Cessna? So you waxed eight of them."
"Nine. There's one buried over a week ago. Nicky. They gave me the gun and told me to shoot him and I did. That was what started all the rest of it. Like letting some kind of bad spell out of the bottle. I thought it was a fake execution, so I fired and killed him."
We got to the slope and looked down to where we could see bits of the airplane. 'I got all the records out of there I could find," I said. "And I looked everywhere for that goddamn missing arm. I looked high and low. I can't imagine how it hid itself so damn well." My voice was getting high and thin, but I couldn't seem to stop. "Somehow we've got to find that damn arm!"
"Hey," he said. "Hey, fellow. Take it easy, huh?" He turned me around and headed me back toward the cars. 'I'll have some of my guys go down there and find it."
We walked in silence.
"How'd you get them all?"
I used as few words as possible.
He gave me a strange sidelong look. I've seen people at the zoo look at the big cats that way, as if they are wondering if the creature could bang right through those bars if he felt like it.
"You're going to have to come back for debriefing."
"Debrief somebody who was never briefed?"
"It's just a word we use, McGee. I think they'll go at you for a week or more. It won't be bad. You'll get good food and rest. The motivation people will want to know just about every word those people spoke to you."
'lithe one they should talk to is Sister Elena Marie. She used to be Bobbie Jo Annison, the evangelist."
"We know. We'd like to talk to her for a long long time. And the people who pull her strings, and write her words. We think she's on an island off the south coast of Cuba. Maybe there'll be a lead in those papers. You shouldn't have gathered them up for us."
'I did that when I was going to blow the whole place to rubble, buildings, people, and all. I was saving the papers for you and Jake. I collected all the money. I think I was saving that for myself. Some of it is mine, about nine thousand. Some twenty-seven thousand is theirs."
'I can't understand why they didn't kill you out
The Green Ripper of hand. That's their style. That's their standard program, No infiltration. No way to do it."
"I was looking for my daughter."
'daughter!"
'Em sorry. I'm past making much sense."
"We'll leave here soon. It's a strain on you, having to stay here."
"Can we stop in San Francisco? I left my ID there, and my clothes."
"Of course. You're not under detention."
"For murder?"
'~or self-defense. We'll let the record read there was a jurisdictional squabble and they fought among themselves. Look, you should be getting a medal, McGee. But what you are going to get is some very serious and earnest advice about keeping your mouth shut forever. I think you cut down their firepower and manpower some. If the documents give us a lead to other camps, we can cut it down some more. But the summer timetable is probably still on. They can't keep their tigers waiting forever. And they have to have something to show the folks helping them from overseas. No matter how much security we lay on, they are going to create one hell of a series of bloody messes from border to border and coast to coast. A lot of sweet dumb people are going to get ripped up. Headlines, speeches, doom, the end of our way of life, and so on. Terrorism is going to pay us one big fat bloody visit, McGee. But it will only be a visit. They underestimate our national resilience. Aroused by that kind of savagery, we can become a very tough kind of people. You are a pretty good example of that."