“Er. . .” Rick finished as he silenced her with a slap. “Shut up, Kate, and don't make me do that again,” he advised.
Kate lunged at Rick, snarling like a mother bear protecting its cub but before Gregg could struggle to his feet Rick smacked her back down. In a matter of seconds, he had a length of cord wrapped around them, tied up as tight as a couple of turkey legs holding in the stuffing for Thanksgiving dinner.
“Barbie and Ken would be so jealous,” Rick remarked, looking them over. “Well, maybe except for the mess you're making of her hair.”
With that, Rick leapt through the air and flat bladed his knife across Robert David's face, and then back across Professor Nguyen's in a blurring move. They were both rigid, stunned, with blood spurting from their split open cheeks; a bone protruded from Robert David's nose. Another swipe and Dr. Donnelly's throat was nearly severed. He lurched forward into Shirley's lap and as he gurgled his life out in bubbles of blood, she began to pray, “I will fear no evil; for thou art with me. . . .”
“Pray all you want, lady, but it won't do you any good unless you've got a different god listening than I had growing up.” Rick calmly went back to the bar, put down the knife, and took another sip from the martini glass. He considered the now paralyzed group, only Shirley making a sound as she quietly continued the Lord's Prayer. Rick rolled his eyes before observing, “Amazing is it not just how stunned the average civilized person is by violence. The brain kind of just slows down and stops, doesn't it?”
“Rick, stop,” Gregg pleaded, willing to do anything to save Kate from a killing machine pushed over the edge. “You're hurting people, man. Let us help you. Please.”
Rick looked over at Gregg like he was the slowest kid in school and was pitied by the class president wearing a lettermen jacket.
“Always the good doctor, huh, Gregg? Don't you get it? I killed those men.” Rick huffed on his knuckles, polished his chest. “All of them.”
Gregg shook his head, frantic to restore even a small sense of reality because Rick had to be out of his mind. “No you didn't, Rick. You did your best to save them. The boogeymen that did it, that's who you killed, the whole gang you wiped out. You were a hero. And you can still be a hero. Just put down the gun and let me help you. We're friends, remember?”
“Gregg?” It was Robert David, speaking for the first time through his slashed open cheek and ruined nose. “This isn't your friend.
He
is the Boogeyman.”
Rick released a big, hearty guffaw. “He's figured it out, Gregg. I guess medical school guys are smarter than you other shrinks that don't get a brass plated MD on the office door.”
As Rick set about stringing wire across the area where they were pinned, he pleasantly took them along like a tour guide down a well-traveled mental health ward.
“Oh, I know all about that stuff, could even be a shrink myself after all the time I've spent getting diagnosed and prescribed this and that pill like they're vitamins for the brain. Even had a few of those electroshock treatments. Actually, I kind of liked those. Not as good as getting laid, but they are mighty stimulating. Anyway, that's why I could tell right off the bat that J.D. wasn't really one of you. Boy did I have a good time playing with that crazy motherfucker. Reminds me a bit of myself.”
“You are insane.”
Kate's defense of J.D. felt like a cut to Gregg, and yet he would kiss that crazy motherfucker himself right now if only he had followed him here. But a glance in the rear-view mirror had assured Gregg that J.D. went into the villa instead.
“Ouch! You hurt my feelings.” Rick looked pained then good-naturedly informed Kate, “Fact is, sanity is way over-rated. It's an illusion anyway. Just ask Gregg. Right, buddy? Bet you wonder if you're crazy yourself half the time, don't you?”
Gregg could feel Kate trying to move her hands that were pinned between their chests but that only seemed to make the rope tighter. He had to keep Rick talking.
“Honestly, Rick, I'd have to say at least three fourths of the time. Maybe full-on crazy after the shit you laid on us here.”
“Man, you crack me up! Like I said at our little tiki hut hotel, makes me wish I could keep you shrinks around.”
“Yeah, that was a great time, wasn't it? Until the next morning. I guess maybe you had something to do with that, too?”
“Oh, you betcha. Not that I much enjoyed doing the Headman and his old lady in while they were sleeping. I do like a challenge and that was easy as taking candy from a baby.”
“No one offers more candy to a kid than a pedophile, it's one of the ways they lure them in. . .Peck has major flaws, but he just doesn't give off that kind of vibe.”
“And what kind of vibe would that be?” J.D. wanted to know.
“Creepy.”
Gregg's own words came back to him from that first visit with Rick in the Highlands, when Peck had shot the elephants. Rick had been feeding them candy from the very beginning and how easily he had lured them in. And even now, in the midst of the mission being turned into a House of Horrors, Rick didn't put out a crazy vibe. He wasn't foaming at the mouth or having his eyes roll up in his head or even remotely looking like the most obvious candidate in the room for a strait jacket.
No, he was still looking like a Burt Lancaster body double and sounding like his personable self when he added with a touch of modesty, “Excuse me for tooting my own horn, but I did think the matches were a nice touch, even if I hated giving them up.”
“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, Greggâbecause I really will miss you most of all, Scarecrowâand 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 RickâRick 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.