As Oakley's arms and part of a leg sailed through the air and landed within reaching distance, Izzy tried to focus on breathing, but he did not piss his pants or vomit. Not even when a tremendous series of explosions immediately to the north went off, close enough to see pieces of bodies and limbs flying in the first blush of dawn did he do more than blink.
All was silent. There was only the call of a morning bird, the wisp of a breeze carrying the acrid stench of enough gunfire and smoke to destroy a small city. Izzy wondered how many dead there would be in Manhattan within the same perimeter of explosions. Countless, countless, and not just from the explosives, terror and hysteria would create a stampede and countless more would be dead from that; surely enough bodies to fill two hospitals.
Judging from all the body parts there would not be anyone remaining to take to the hospital.
“Can we stand yet?” Gregg asked in a voice like a flat line on a heart monitor. “Or do we just play dead and wait for the bogeymen to show up if they won?”
“You and Izzy stay here. Hide inside your helmets and don't move. I'llâwhat the hell? Never mind, get up.”
J.D. was already up and trotting in the direction of a limping Rick Galt, holding his bleeding side with one hand, with his other a raised M16âand on the tip was a large fragment of something white that looked like part of a ghost mask.
Izzy got to his feet. Gregg, too. They ran towards Rick, who staggered then collapsed, but even as he lay there he kept the butt of his rifle to the ground, the barrel pointed skyward. The mask-like white thing lightly moved in the breeze as if it were the American flag holding the promise of freedom.
Izzy, Gregg, they picked up their pace. All around them was destruction: Blown up earth and pieces of bodies hanging from the broken plants and flaming, smoking trees. But in spite of it all there was a flicker of hope, that somehow at least one other person had survived, and that someone was a friend who just might not go home in a body bag, and pray god whatever Rick had signaled them with meant an escape from this nightmare that had sent J.D. here like some dark angel of death.
Rick was barely semiconscious when they got to him. J.D. immediately examined what did appear to be a portion of a shattered mask, as Izzy inspected the physical wounds and Gregg did his own kind of triage.
“Rick, Rick? We're here for you, buddy. Izzy's going to patch you up as best he can with. . .Mikel, can you go get the medic bag? We should have whatever painkillers you didn't put in our water along with a suture kit.”
J.D. hesitated maybe a second then for once took his orders from Gregg. “Fine,” he curtly agreed. Then no doubt needing to be top dog issued the directive: “Stay put.”
As J.D. left them with Rick, Gregg noted several things:
J.D. didn't ask why they were suddenly not on a first name basis.
Nor did he bother denying his little doping trick.
And he didn't try to defend his actions by saying it was to keep them safe.
Yeah right. Gregg suspected if Rick hadn't come running with J.D. on his heels to get them out of the camp maybe his and Izzy's throats would be slit wider than the bloody gash in Rick's torso and J.D. wouldn't do more than shrug. Gregg hated jumping to such ugly conclusions but J.D. wasn't giving him much reason to think otherwise. And why? Because J.D. didn't explain himself to anyone, and that included a couple of pawns drafted into a chess match by a high level player who thrived on intrigue and subterfuge and drove a 57 Chevy when it suited his purposes to impress, rather than a jeep like the rest of the poor slobs who were counting the days to go home.
Jesus. You only had a Chevy here if this was your home.
Rick gripped Gregg's wrist and pleaded, “Forget about me, can you go see if any of my guys are still out there, if you can help them. . .if you can find more than thisâthis. . .” He managed to hurl away the fragment of the mask J.D. had left behind. “There were three. . .I saw three of them. . .maybe more I didn't see. Need to know we got them. Need. . .to know. . .”
“Hey, it's okay,” Gregg said soothingly, glad to have someone to care for besides his completely fucked up self. “Once Mikel gets back, we'll go look, but let us tend to you first.”
“Not. . .right. Captain goes down with his ship. Please. . .” Rick's voice was broken, his grip lax. “Please just do this forâ¦me.”
Gregg looked at Izzy. He gave a small nod. There was, after all, nothing they could do for Rick until J.D. got back with the medical necessities and if they could do this one thing then they had paid Rick back in some small way for quite possibly saving their lives, not to mention the lives of how many others if the Ghost Soldier/Boogeyman psyops initiative was finally,
finally,
over.
They left Rick lying alone and went in the direction from where he had emerged. Just more body parts, more blood and bone fragments andâ
“Look!” Gregg picked up more pieces to a shattered mask, then quickly found another. Suddenly he understood Rick's earlier glee of going on an Easter Egg hunt for the bloody bastards.
“I found some, too,” Izzy said excitedly, ignoring the very disturbing bits of bloody body debris surrounding what he lifted from the ground. Then he really hit the jackpot with an AK47 Soviet rifle and shreds of blown apart Chinese Regular Army uniforms. “Wow, it's all here. Everything is what Rick was saying all alongâwhich we did concur with, of course. But. . . there's just one thing that bothers me.”
“What?”
Izzy shook his head, as if trying to clear it from the massive amounts of hallucinogen and whatever else they had consumed since arriving for this second trip to the Highlands, compliments of J.D. Sure, Rick had invited them but J.D. had made sure it happened.
“Oakley. He got blown up, too. We should have gotten blown up with him, right?”
“Right. Maybe not J.D., though, if he was far enough behind us.”
“Rick thought it would be safe in that direction. Maybe I imagined it, but it seemed like J.D. hesitated before pushing me in Oakley's direction.”
Gregg was amply paranoid himself to latch onto Izzy's train of what-if?
“You think J.D. may have wired something up without Rick knowing it?”
“I don't know what I think any more. But I can't fathom what motive J.D. would have in killing off Rick's troops.”
“Yeah, even if he decided we're less dangerous being permanently quiet than just really sleepy. He drugged our water.”
“
What?”
At Gregg's nod, Izzy snorted in disgust. “Why would he do that?”
“Supposedly to keep us and everybody else safer while he was doing his thing out here.”
“Maybe he did some extra wiring while he was out and about.”
“Yeah. Or maybe Oakley veered off from where Rick said to go, or maybe Rick thought wrong and just made a costly mistake. Who knows? Shit happens, man.”
Izzy nodded. “You're right. Shit happens. And I'd rather that be the case than think J.D. had something to do with Oakley or these guys getting taken out while he used his own methods to get rid ofâ” Izzy lifted the remains of evidence in his hands.
Gregg couldn't dispute the fact that if the trap had been J.D.'s doing, even if his methods were morally reprehensible, the results were indisputable and that was something J.D. would consider perfectly justified. Like doping their water.
“We'd better get back before he shows up,” Gregg said.
“Right, and puts us in a corner for not staying put.”
J.D. beat them back after all and was lightly slapping an unconscious Rick on the cheek when they arrived, trophies of shattered masks, Chinese uniform shreds, and firearm in hand.
J.D. stopped his ministrations, such as they were, and glared at them both.
“You tampered with the crime scene?”
For a moment Gregg couldn't find his voice, but when he did, it was the low and lethal roar of an awakened dragon.
“Crime scene?
Crime scene?”
he repeated, beyond incredulous. “This whole goddamn war is a crime scene. It's criminal. And
you
are nothing but a whore for the crime bosses with enough innocent blood on your hands to burn in hell for. . .eternity is
Â
not long enough for any of you motherfuckers.”
Gregg won the staring match but not the final call.
“Better not let mom hear you talking like that, Gregg, or she might wash your mouth out with soap instead of letting the babysitter take you to the boardwalk. Dr. Moskowitz, would you please do your best stitching work on Captain Galt while I radio in for help?”
Gregg was rendered speechless. Surely Kate hadn't. . .
No, he refused to believe her capable of breaking their sacred trust, especially with the bastard who had become his worst nightmare.
A nightmare with a radio. One J.D. could have used to spare him and Izzy from any and all of this, though apparently he had kept them around in case they might be of further use.
Because he was apparently still keeping them around. . .
J.D. walked in the direction of the “crime scene” and came back shortly to announce, “Pick up is on its way.”
Izzy had just finished his emergency field stitching of Rick's gaping wound when Rick groggily asked, “Where are my guys? Did you find any of them you could help? Oakley. . .?”
Izzy nodded to Gregg. This was his job.
“I'm sorry Rick,” he said gently. “We looked but they're. . .I'm afraid they're all gone.”
“All?” The agony in Rick's voice was so visceral that Gregg had to swallow past the lump in his own throat as he solemnly nodded. “But they were my men,” Rick protested. “My best men. There
must
be someone left.”
Rick struggled to rise and Izzy pressed him back down.
“You need to rest until we can get you out of here and into a proper medical facility, Rick. I'm really sorry about your guys, but there's nothing you can do for them now except take care of yourself. They would want that, I'm sure.”
Rick covered his face with both hands and kept shaking his head. It was hard to know how to console such a tough guy who was so broken up. When he spoke, his voice was choked.
“Okay, I want to get my guys bodies back. It's important they go back home. And,” he swallowed deeply. “I've got a lot of sad letters to write. But I don't want to do it in a damned hospital. I've got some LRRP buddies near the firebase in Ban Me Thuot, so just take me there. You did a great job stitching, Doc. I'll heal up fine.”
“You need antibiotics,” Izzy said firmly. “And you need more medical care than what I could manage here. I cannot in good conscience allow you to return to any firebase, Rick. That's a breeding ground for infection, and enough has been lost today without you ending up in ICU or worse.”
Izzy then hit Rick with the painkiller and he relaxed, confessing, “I don't like hospitals. Goes back to a bad experience I had as a kid.”
Gregg had an idea but he couldn't get clearance on it. J.D., however, could and should even consider it an appealing alternative for other reasons: there was bound to be extensive debriefing for a proven Chinese psyops, plus there was the matter of all Rick's dead Special Ops guys. Messy stuff that J.D. and the military would want kept off the record. There would be fewer ears to hear outside a military hospital.
“Hey, Mikel, what do you think of taking him to the mission? He could recover and do his writing there. Kate and the Donnelly's and their staff, they'll take extra good care of him.”
“Not to mention it's a good, quiet place for the soul to heal, as well,” Izzy added.
Gregg expected an immediate agreement but J.D. stroked his chin and looked away, seeming to debate what should be a no-brainer.
At his curt nod, Gregg reassured Rick, “You're going to like this hospital. Kate and the Donnelly's will make you feel like you're part of the family, not in some sterile ward.”
“Really?” Rick asked hopefully. “Would they really take me in?”
“They turn no one away.” Izzy patted Rick on the shoulder, using his best bedside manner. “And we would come down to see you. Even bring Nikki over. Right, Gregg?”
“Absolutely. Just what the doctor ordered.”
Rick smiled weakly, and Gregg wondered why it was okay for him to imitate Izzy but not J.D. As Izzy smiled along, all of them just borrowing what humor they could to offset the overload of trauma, Gregg realized it was because he wasn't doing it behind a friend's back and on top of all the other issues he had with J.D., he did not feel safe turning his back to him. A part of him wanted to trust J.D. even now, that itsy-bitsy molecule of naiveté that still wanted to believe in Santa Clause, still hoped on some desperate level that J.D. would find a way to redeem himself, that he wasn't the whore Gregg had accused him of being. That J.D. wouldn't just as easily shoot them from behind as slap them on the back and say they were all on the same team.
“I have one more favor to ask,” Rick whispered. “Could you get me all my guy's dog tags?”
“I have them right here.” J.D. pulled them out, dangling them on their standard issue ball chains.
When Rick reached up to touch them, J.D. held his gaze and didn't give up the tags. “I will take care of getting these back with the body bags.”
“Thanks, man,” Rick said.
“Strike hard. Strike first,” J.D. said like a eulogy.
“Damn straight,” Rick confirmed and slumped back on the ground, eyes closed.
Nikki opened the front door and immediately wished she had a peep hole because she sure wouldn't have opened up for Don, not after his last visit.
Too late, the door was open and there he was, down on one knee and extending flowers, a big box of chocolates with a fat red bow, and a fancy bottle of wine.
“Peace offering?” he asked, sweet as you please. “I'm willing to beg.”
Nikki folded her arms. She knew she was a soft touch but not this time.
“Go away, Don.”
“But if I do then I can't properly apologize for the last time I was here. I just hated the way we ended things. My behavior was deplorable, and I want us to at least be friends. Besides, I've been working on my Elvis, just for you, because you know. . .” Then he launched into, “I ain't nothin' but a hound dogâ”
“Stop it!” Despite herself, Nikki smiled. She was still floating on air from her visit with Rick at the mission. And, she had to admit, she really hated the way she and Don had ended things, too, so if he just wanted to be friends. . .
Well, she didn't want him hearing through the grapevine she had an official new boyfriend. That was just plain tacky and she wanted to deserve what Rick had said when she visited him at the mission hospital today:
Kitten, you are one class act.
They had kissed. It gave her tummy butterflies. Just remembering must be why she felt that strange fluttering in her stomach when she went against her better judgment and said, “Okay, you can come in. But just for a minute and you have to promise to behave.”
“I promise.” Don got up and gave her a kiss on the cheek just before sailing through the door, which he promptly shut before she could do it herself.
His breath had a strange smell, like he had tried to cover up whatever was really on it with Listerine. And he had another smell that was, um, feral. She knew that fancy word because she was educated, but her real understanding of it came from growing up where predators went after more vulnerable prey, like those weasels that killed their chickens in a coop.
She wasn't a chicken. Nikki knew underneath the cotton candy surface, she was tough. So why she had this frantic urge to run out the door Don had just shut was beyond her. Especially since he was so gentlemanly the way he went about getting them wine glasses, saying, “Let's toast to letting bygones be bygones,” opening the bottle with the corkscrew, and putting her favorite Elvis 45 onto the stereo. But as “Are You Lonesome Tonight” began to play, and Don poured a big glass of red merlot for her, then him, Nikki just couldn't shake the feeling that something was not right. The feeling grew even stronger as he patted the place beside him on the couch where they had “done it” the first time and she felt kind of cheap since bad girls did and nice girls didn't. At least not in the buckle of the Bible belt where she came from.
She was a nice girl; she just regretted doing it with Don.
Reluctantly she sat, but on the chair beside the couch. Don pursed his lips into a pout, then scooted closer, leaned in. Maybe it was his eyes that didn't seem quite right. They were really dilated. And the way he smiled made her heart beat really fast.
“Why aren't you drinking your wine? It's your favorite.” He tilted the glass she clenched, pushed it toward her mouth and she gulped as fast as she could to keep from choking while rivulets went down her chin and he instructed, “Come on now, drink up. A little more, yes, that's good. Here, let's have another glass.”
“But I don't want another glass,” she gurgled, eyeing the door and swiping the wetness from her chin.
“If I say you do, then you do. And I say”âHe exchanged her glass for his and said flatlyâ “You do.”
She tried to push the glass away and him along with it, but she only succeeded in knocking the glass to the bamboo floor and freeing up both his hands as he surged from the couch, grabbed her by the shoulders, then pushed her down, pressing her knees deep into the glass she had shattered.
Nikki tried to scream but he gripped her jaw, pressed a hard, mean kiss against her lips until she tasted blood, and when he pulled back, she still couldn't make a sound with the hand he now had at her throat. He began to lift her by it, giving her no choice but to stand or be strangled as he whispered, “You're mine. You know that, Nikki, just like you know that you can never see him again. I won't stand for it. If you understand nod your head.”
She tried but it was hard with him tightening his grip into her windpipe.
“That's right, Nikki, but sweetie you humiliated me, and there is a little punishment to be paid. And you love your little punishments, don't you?”
She tried desperately to shake her head âno' but he only laughed.
“Now, now, you know that you love your little punishments. This time though it's going to be more fun because you owe me for being bad. Then once you've paid up and we've had our fun, I will forgive you and everything will be back to where it should be. The good doctor might even still marry you so you don't have to go back to the pathetic little village you came from.”
Adrenaline shot through her and Nikki shoved him away with all her might. She could feel the blood pumping past the glass shards in the knees she would get on in church once she was safe. She just had to run a few feet more, get her hand on the handle andâ
She was reaching for the knob when her head snapped back and her body along with it, propelled in reverse by the hand yanking her by the hair, then the cruel other hand that spun her around and slapped her hard across the face.
“You fucking bitch,” he seethed, “Get on your knees and beg.”
“No!”
“I said get on your knees.” He slapped her again. “Now do it.”
“You're crazy! I'd rather marry my third cousin than you. Now get out before I tell Rick you put your hands on me.
Get out
.”
And as Elvis sang “Is your heart filled with pain?” Nikki's head cracked back, she lost her balance, and split her skull on the corner edge of hers and Margie's coffee table.
Peck was breathing hard as he surveyed the damage. The 45 skip, skip, skipped on the phonograph needle and Elvis kept repeating, “lonesome tonight. . .lonesome tonight. . . lonesome tonight. . .” while blood flowed from Nikki's head, her neck at an impossible angle.
He knew the outcome already but still he frantically checked for a pulse. “Come on Nikki, come on, don't you dare die on me,” he pleaded.
Her pulse fluttered. Stopped. Her pupils were fixed. The record continued to scratch. . .
Lonesome tonight
. . .He looked around. The place was a mess. . .
Lonesome tonight
. . .Her blood was all over him. . .
Lonesome tonight.
He had to think. . .
Think.
He washed his hands, his face. Quickly cleaned himself up from the top of his head to the bottom of his boots. Left the glass she had shattered, shards still sticking out of her knees. And Nikki, who actually would have made a good doctor's wife with the right clothes and some lessons in elocution, he left her exactly as she was as he considered his options.
This was not how he meant this lesson to go. The game had gotten completely out of hand. He had come here high and drunk and furious after learning Nikki had visited the missionary hospital to see the big stupid hulk the idiot doctors had brought in yesterday.
They had humiliated him, all three of those little pricks. Just thinking about it had made him want to hurt something, so Uncle Sam had fixed him up with one of his “nieces” who didn't even fight him when he took his frustrations out on her.
No one would care what he did to a Vietnamese girl. A lot of people would care about the death of a Red Cross Dolly. MPs and CIDs would be crawling all over this place like ants at a picnic as soon as the alarm was raised.
Peck checked his watch. It wouldn't be easy to dispose of the body properly and get everything spic and span before Margie finished the night shift, but he could possibly manage it. Then again, that would only be a temporary fix since a one minute investigation would confirm Nikki hadn't gone back to her hillbilly relatives or simply disappeared overnight. No. Foul play would be presumed and he would be a top suspect.
He still had a buzz going from the amphetamines and liquor he had consumed, but it was wearing off. His heart wasn't racing as fast as it should be, that's what the uppers and carefully constructed games were for, but for once he was glad his triggers worked differently than others, enabling him to stay calm now that he had a dead Dolly on his hands and very little time to figure out a plan when he was already in trouble with the CID.
Colonel Johnson:
If I get one more call from you, or about you, I will personally see that the rest of your tour here makes a firebase look like cooking up brownies in an Easy-Bake Oven.
Kellogg:
Just remember, if I hear one more thing about you from Doctors Kelly, Moskowitz, or Mikel that doesn't make me want to invite you to my daughter's wedding, you are goner than gone to wherever Colonel Johnson wishes to send you and that includes Hell.
Mikel must have done or said something to get him in trouble, then Kelly and Moskowitz backed their ringleader up. They were the reason he was in trouble with the CID. They were the ones who brought the goon to the mission and that's what had really set him off, so in a big way it was their fault he had come over to teach Nikki a lesson, and that made it their fault that she was dead. Now the question was, how could he implicate them to get off the hook himself? If he could do that, then he would be spinning shit into gold.
Peck put together a hasty plan. It wasn't perfect but neither was the military system. He left Nikki exactly as she was and slipped into the remaining twilight, humming to himself,
Are you Lonesome T
o
night?
It wasn't even 9 a.m. and Gregg felt like a broken record. He felt broken all over.
“We do not know where Major Mikel is,” he repeated, sitting next to Izzy on the couch in the villa's living room. “I told you that. We are not his keepers and he does not tell us where he is going or when he is coming back, okay? Man, for the tenth time already.”
“Keep it cool, Doctor,” said the MP, standing next to the chair where the local CID agent sat across from them. The MP had his hand on his pistol.
Gregg took a deep breath. He wondered if the MP shot him in the head what in god's name would come slithering out now. He could see that these guys were stressed over the situation too, but Nikki hadn't been their friend. As for the friend who found herâ¦
Peck had come in early and offered to relieve Margie on the unit; he had been the one to pick up Margie's call shortly thereafter. She was so hysterical not even Colonel Kohn could calm her down on the phone, as Peck raced over to see what had happened. Margie had to be sedated. The MP and CID had stopped Izzy from going to see her.
And all this before morning rounds.
The murder of a Red Cross Dolly was going to scream headlines in the States, let alone that it looked like a psycho officer went crazy and did it. These guys wanted to make an arrest right now and probably did not care who it was as long as it took some heat off of them. The local CID guy was expecting the top brass from Saigon within the hour and he was pushing hard to make progress before they arrived.
“I say again we would like to have a lawyer here for us,” Izzy asserted. “This is serious and we are taking it seriously. Gregg, if need be, I'll call my dad.”
The CID officer named Jamison reminded Gregg of a crocodile the way he smiled. “That all sounds good in the movies, Doc, but as the song goes âYou Are In The Army Now.' This means you will get a lawyer, an army lawyer, when we give you one so shut it about the lawyer and tell me again where you were last night, and where is Major Mikel? The boot tracks at the scene clearly match the boot tracks on your stairs. And how interesting that your own boots have the same red dirt from up in the Highlands where you say you returned from with Major Mikel. And besides the dirt there is the matter of the blood, a lot of blood, staining both of
your
boots.”
“I told you it was elephant blood.” Gregg repeated again.
“Right, elephant blood.” Jamison looked at his notes and his crocodile grin got bigger. “Let's see, you guys were out for a jaunty safari ride to go watch elephants play in the water and got your boots bloody. You know, I have to say this is quite the fucking story you have for an alibi on those boots and I would work a little harder on it if I were you because if this Mikel comes back and has any better story, then you guys are my prime suspects, you know what I mean? So again, where were you last night?”
It dawned on Gregg that J.D. could implicate them however he wanted and the army could throw away the key. The two drafted shrinks were easily dispensable to the military. J.D. was not. This could be a convenient way to shut them up indefinitely if J.D. or the army was worried about any classified information being leaked about the latest Chinese psyops disaster they wanted kept under wraps.
“Listen, the victim is our friend and we want her killer brought to justice even more than you do,” Gregg said carefully. “Our story about the elephants can be verified, even if Dr. Moskowitz and I are both a little fuzzy on everywhere we were and everything we did last night. Suffice it to say we had a couple of really bad days before hitting the town to try to forget them. But I can assure you that it did not involve brutally assaulting and murdering an innocent young woman whose welfare and safety has been very important to me.”
“He's telling you the truth,” Izzy interjected before Jamison could wedge the broken record question in again. “Not only that, doesn't this all strike you as a little too convenient? The individual who relieved Captain Kennedy of her duties early and answered the phone at the unit when she discovered the body has been suspected of perpetrating a previously abusive relationship upon the victim. As a result he certainly bears your scrutiny as a potential suspect.”