The Green Ripper

The Green Ripper called hearing that tantalizingly familiar sound of the SX-70 a fraction of a second after I had fired and killed Nicky.

They were all curious about me, all waiting for my reaction. I could read a certain righteous satis- faction on their faces. I was fighting nausea and hoping I hadn't turned so gray-green they would suspect how close I was. Nausea, and a tendency of the world around me to fade in and out. Killing is such an ancient taboo. Only freaks ever adjust to killing people they have known and talked to, except when it is to save their own lives. Discipline enables uniformed people to kill unseen strangers. Children can imitate something seen on television, but the aftershock can be deadly. I had killed before, and it has never ceased being a wrenching psychic trauma. As I sought for some reaction which would make me reasonably acceptable to these people, suddenly I lost control of my acquired identity.

I stared at Persival. He was trickery. He was death. He was insane devotion to an incomprehen- sible cause. He was a shooter of little silver pellets into the necks of the lovely and innocent.

"You dirty, murderous, crazy son of a bitch!" I said in a low and shaky voice.

He raised the reloaded weapon and aimed carefully from eight feet away at a spot on my forehead. I knew where the slug would strike. The spot felt round and icy.

I was convinced I was about to join Nicky.He knew he was going to die, and I could find no better last words than his.

"Chicken shit," I said.

"Any questions, McGraw?"

"There's nothing I want to know that you can answer." I was watching the trigger finger. As soon as I saw pressure whiten it, I was going to dive for his ankles and try to come up with the weapon before Sammy and Ahman could blow me away.

"Any last statement, fisherman?"

"I will state that if you don't make the first shot good, I'll get my hands on you before you can fire that thing again."

He looked at me for a long time, and then slowly lifted the barrel of the weapon until it pointed at the sky.

Y think my first hunch was correct, Brother Thomas. I think we can train you and find a use for you. I think you can become very valuable."

I could feel the tension go out of all of us. Deep exhalations..

He put the weapon away. He turned to Sammy and reached for the picture. After Persival had e~c- amined it, he motioned me closer and handed it to me. I was on the right, in fuzzy focus, enough of the left side of my face showmg to make me recognizable. The barrel of the pistol was half raised to the perpendicular, the ineradicable habit pattern of people used to firing pistols and revolvers. Nick was

The Green Ripper near the left margin of the print, in sharp focus. He was going down, but his knee had not yet touched. His head was tilted back from impact, with the tiny death mark visible next to his nose.

Handing it back, I said, "Is this some kind of leverage?"

"It is, Brother Thomas, but not the way you think. Call it a verification of my instinct, useful when I go after permission for what I have in mind."

'I don't know what you mean."

"Ahman, arrange burial. Full roster except, of course, for Barry down on the gate. Have Haris read the service. I am going for a walk with Mr. McGraw."

163

11

Persival did not walk well. He moved slowly and seemed to have trouble with his balance. The sky was turning gray, and the wind was cooler. We walked to the end of the small plateau. He seated himself on the trunk of a large pine which had fallen at the edge of the slope.

He lowered himself carefully. With a wry Lincolnesque smile he said, "I have what the young call bad wheels. I was the guest for a memorable period of time of an amiable old park named Somoza. He had my legs broken."

I sat astride the log about eight feet from him. "This," he said, "is the ancient definition of the best

The Green Ripper kind of education, the pupil on one end of a log and the teacher on the other."

"What do I "

He stopped me with a raised hand. "Just let me ramble a bit. Answer me when I ask you a question. You would seem to know small boats and know the sea. And with your background, no one would question your interest in purchasing a certain sort of small boat."

'I don't want to use my search money for a boat."

"You are talking trivia, and when you do, you bore me."

"I came here to find my kid. Maybe that's boring to you, but it's not to me."

'McGraw, you are going to have to learn how to accept discipline."

'fir. Persival, you can't run me the same way you run those people of yours. I'll answer you when you ask questions, and 111 answer the questions you don't ask. I talk when I please."

He looked me over. He was patently exasperated.

"Brother Thomas, can you swim?"

"Yes."

'Em glad to hear that. A lot of commercial fishermen can't. Do you know how to use scuba gear?"

'~es."

"Do you know what a limpet mine is?"

"Yes."

"Can you tell me? I want to be sure you know."

"It's a mine that sticks to what it is going to blow up. It can be magnetic, or covered with stickom. It can have a timer or be blown up by a transmitter."

'~Very good! You've worked around explosive charges?"

Enough to be careful."

"Suppose I gave you the task of fastening a limpet mine to the hull of one of those new tankers which carry frozen liquefied gas. How would you go about it?"

I recalled what he had said about the boat purchase. It was enough of a clue. 'In the area where the tanker is, I'd get hold of a commercial fishing boat, small. One-man operation, with an inboard or outboard. I'd dress right for the climate and the place. I'd fish the area, catch fish, sell the catch. [d keep track of the winds and tides, and when everything was right, I'd have a breakdown and get carried up against the hull of the ship, maybe forward where the flare would hide me from the weather decks. Maybe if I had a little electric outboard let down through the hull, and concealed somehow, I could count on drifting to exactly where I would have to be. The breakdown should be about dusk. I'd place the mine, arm it, then get my breakdown fixed and get out of there."

"Suppose you were stopped and searched by a harbor patrol?"

"I could explain the electric outboard. The limpet would have to look like something else."

The Green Ripper

"Such as?"

I shrugged. "Maybe a mushroom anchor, threaded so you could unscrew the shank."

I could see that he liked that. "I believe I was right in deciding we can find a use for you, Brother McGraw."

"Not blowing up a ship. I won't do that."

'whether or not you will do it or won't do it is not the point at issue right now. It would be a con- siderable time in the future. Things can be worked out, I'm sure."

And I could certainly guess how they'd be worked out. I had been wrong about Nicky. But this was a certainty. The little limpet mine would have a trigger and a timing device and there would be careful instruction on how to set it. But the act of placing it against metal would activate it. I wasn't one of the true believers. I was expendable.

'A don't hold with killing people that never did anything to me. That's terrorism."

"Terrorism? Beware of tag words. General Sherman was a terrorist. The Continental Congress was a terrorist society. How about Pancho Villa, air strikes on cities, the torpedoing of ocean liners? Beware of semantics."

I played dumb. What do you mean? I've got nothing against the Jews."

"Semantics, Brother, not Semitics. The study of words. In World War Two, the Londoners worshiped their heroic young men who risked heavy

167

Jolm D. MacDonald flak to drop bombs on Germany and despised the degenerate fiends in human form who flew over, risking heavy flak, to drop bombs on English cities. Begin calls Arafat a terrorist Begin led a squad which blew up a British hotel, killing scores of people, when he was a young so-called terrorist."

A light rain began to fall, steeply slanted by the increasing wind. Persival got up. "Well go into all this, Brother Thomas, after you have a chance to hear Sister Elena Marie and think about the message she brings us. Incidentally, you will have been moved by now into one of the travel trailers. T-Six. The green-and-white one. You'll be much more comfortable."

"Is it okay to ask if I can have my money back now?"

'No. It isn't acceptable to ask at this time."

'Jo you know when I can ask, Mr. Persival?"

"You will be told. livery effort is being made to locate your daughter. I want you to know that. While you are here, records are being searched."

We were walking back in the light rain, at his pace.

'us it okay to mention I never had breakfast this morning?"

"You have the run of the place, Brother. Stay up on the flats. Do not head down the hill at any point. I am sure you can locate the kitchen."

A small group was straggling ahead of us toward the buildings. Chuck, Nena, Stella, Sammy, Haris,

The Green Ripper

Ahman,and Alvor, all but Alvor in the short white robes which looked like smocks except for the monk's hoods attached to them. The women and Haris wore the hoods pulled up, and Haris carried a book.

'I see the service is over," Persival said.

Yhey dig a fast grave."

"It was all prepared," he said. He smiled at me in a fatherly way. He laid his hand on my shoulder. "Actually, Brother, there were two. Just in case."

In case I couldn't shoot him?"

He took his hand away. "Let's say it was just in case."

I checked out my green-and-white travel trailer. It was an old Scottie, sifting on cement blocks. It had recently been cleaned. There were some water droplets on the flat surfaces. There were two folded blankets, no sheets. There was a tiny gas heater, a hand-pumped water supply and a Porta-Potty. My duffel bag was on the fact of the bed. There was no way to lock it. I had the uneasy feeling that Nicky had lived here in this constricted space, had curled his long bulk on the bed that was built across the rear end of the trailer. I kept seeing that Polaroid shot. It was curiously more vivid than what I had actually seen.

I went looking for the kitchen. The steel warehouse building was tightly secured. I came upon Alvor and asked him. He did not answer. He merely pointed. It was the only frame building in the group of structures, about twelve feet by twenty, with unfinished open studding on the inside. There was a kerosene stove, an old kerosene re- frigerator, two plank tables on sawhorses, and some unmatched chairs and camp stools. The utensils and plates and cups were on open shelves made of planks and bricks. There was a big blackboard at the other end of the room.

I found butter and eggs, scrambled four eggs, and sat at the plank table and ate them. Barry came in, relieved of guard duty, and smiled at me. "Got everything you need, Brother?"

This one, thanks."

Avant some coffee?',

Thanks, yes."

He brought it over, as well as a cup for himself. and sat across from me. "Everybody gets tested, one way or other," he said.

'~Sure."

Eve all liked Nicky, but he was a fuck-off. You can't have your life depending on a fuck-off."

"I reckon so."

"Sorry it had to happen the way it did. Must of made you feel bad."

Barry hadn't been there when I lost my cool. The tone, the eyes in the dark face were innocently sym- pathetic. But he could have heard about it by now and could be faking to draw me out.

"I was a mite shook up," I said. "But when you

The Green Ripper come right down to it, I didn't really know him. Or any of you."

"You know me, Brother Thomas. And you know the other brothers and sisters. We your home, man. We all part of the same thing."

Chow do you know I'm not like Nicky?"

"AII it needs is Brother Persival saying you are part of it. That's all that makers. We all came up through the Church, but that don't mean everybody has to. You got family in the Church, that daughter, right?"

Wherever she is." '

'Whey looking for her. Don't worry."

As there any rule about taking a bath in the creek?"

"None at all. The best bath hole is upstream from the great big rocks, past the little trees. Take a towel off the line if there isn't one in your trailer."

It was a good solid yellow soap, and it worked well enough in ice water. I took my change of clothes with me and washed out the dirty ones, carried them back to the encampment, and hung them on the community line, along with my washed-out, wrung-out towel.

Then Chuck came and got me for lunch. With his drooping mustache, he looked like a Scandinavian travel advertisement Haris had made some deerburgers, fried with onion. They sat me at the middle of the table, where I could get the full benefit of the love-buzzing, the hush whenever I spoke, the smiles and eye contact and shameless flattery. Yes, they all knew as soon as they saw me that I would be a wonderful addition to the group. Just wonderful. Just what they had been waiting for. Persival and Alvor sat alone at the other table, talking in low voices.

The conversation was slightly strained, and I guessed it was because they felt they should not talk about Nicky, but he was ever-present on the edge of memory. I made a few fruitless-efforts to steer the conversation toward politics and violence, but they fielded them deftly and threw to another base.

After cleanup, a screen was set up and a projector wheeled out. I thought I was going to hear a tape by the celebrated Sister Elena Marie, but it was a creaky old black-and-white motion picture about The Long March, with a noisy sound track, a voice-over with a marked British accent, a lot of ruing, shooting, and gesticulating. They marched across China and up into the hills and caves, while my chin kept dropping onto my chest and I kept waking with a start. It ended with a loud blast of martial music which roused me enough to get up and say good night and go back to my trailer. I couldn't find the light switch and finally gave up and went to bed in the dark.

I was awakened by the click of the latch on the flimsy door of the trailer, a stealthy and barely au- dible squeak as it was opened. I wondered if one of

The Green Ripper the team had decided to correct Persival's decision to keep me alive. I moved in the bunk until I had my shoulders against the wall, until I was braced to move as quickly as I had to.

The generator was silent, the encampment dark. Just enough starlight came through the window above the bunk for me to make out a pale figure moving toward me. It stopped a couple of feet away, and I heard a silky whisper of fabric, caught a faint scent of female, and realized that Nena or Stella was paying me a visit. I guessed I had been asleep for an hour.

She picked up a corner of the blanket and came sliding into the bunk, shuddering with the cold, reaching to embrace me. I faked a great start of surprise.

"It's me, Brother Thomas," she whispered. Yt's Stella."

So I was being gifted with the sallow blond lady with the inadequate jaw. '~Vhat's going on?"

'dwell. whatever you want to go on. Okay?" Vhose idea is this?"

What difference would that make?"

"lid like to know."

"You do a lot of talking, huh?"

I caught her questing hand by the wrist and took it away from me and said, "Is there anything wrong with wanting to know?"

"Look, are you okay? I mean, you make it with women?"

"Jesus Christ!" she said. And then, 'Tm sorry. That's blasphemy. But, you know, you are something else."

She turned onto her back, trying to separate herself from me totally, but the bunk was too narrow. Hip rested against hip, shoulder against shoulder.

"All it is," she said patiently, "you're new. Probably they don't want you being restless and wanting to sneak off or anything. So you get food and shelter and, once in a while, a piece of ass. What does it cost? Nothing but time, right?"

'Lou sound as if you did some hooking."

"I was into it. So?"

"Where was that?"

"So you're another one of those."

"Another what?"

'~hen I was a hooker, there was always a trick who wanted to know how I got into that line of work."

"Stella, settle down. Where are you going, anyway? Why the hostility? I can ask about you because I'm interested in you, can't I? Is there a house rule against that?"

She took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Novell, okay. I'm sorry. When I came in here, I was really ready, you know? I don't feel that way very often. But what happens, you want to talk. So I'm losing the edge. It's fading on me. I think I got that ready on account of Nicky dying. Death does it to

The Green Ripper me in a funny way, I guess. When somebody you know is suddenly dead forever, then I want to get laid. I've heard lots of people are like that. Like in shelters when there's bombing going on. Maybe it goes back to instinct. Like in animals. If people are dying, it's time to make more people and keep the population up. But there was a couple of years there when I couldn't have come no matter what."

"What do you mean by that?"

Of you want talk instead of tail, 1~11 give you talk. I'm from an absolutely nowhere place. Opportunity, Montana."

"Little west of Butte? South of Anaconda? Flint Creek Range and the South Fork?"

"Hey, you heard of it!" She turned and settled herself more comfortably, fitting the nape of her neck to my arm, one hand resting on my chest.

"Been through there. When did you leave?"

"A long time ago. I don't know who's left there, if anybody."

"Run away?"

"Sort of. With a girl friend. We got in with some rough people in Miami. I got busted for possession, and when I got out, I couldn't find her. A cop put me on the streets, hustling. Then one day he beat me up bad because he thought I was holding out, and I met some people from the Church of the Apocryphal"

"In Miami?"

"You'll find the Church everywhere these days.

What I was thinking, I could use the Church. They'd take care of me and keep that freak cop away from me. I'd been beaten real bad. What I was then, I was a dumb, selfish, ignorant teenage hooker. What I needed most was some rest from cruising the streets and taking the marks back to that motel room. When I was rested up, I'd take off. But the people in the Church, they knew what I was thinking every minute. They never gave me a minute alone. They loved me. They believed I was precious and they made me think of myself as pre cious to them. I was a lazy little slut, and they cured me of that. My God, I never worked so hard and so long in my life. It made hooking seem like picnics. Dumb dreary food and not enough sleep ever. Fifteen hours at a stretch, seeing stuff to strangers, walking the streets carrying candy and thread and junk, begging money, making quotas. My weight went down to minus nothing. A lot of my hair fell out. I had a scaly rash all the time. I forgot about sex. I stopped menstruating. My tits and my ass like to shrunk away to nothing. And when I was about to believe the life was going to kill me, suddenly I realized I was doing God's work, and that I wanted to drive myself even harder than they were driving me. And once I saw the Light and heard the Word, I started to get bet ter. I ate tons of that sorry food they served at the dorm, and it tasted delicious. And I began to seD more stuff. I made people buy it. I turned in big

The Green Ripper scores every night and slept like a baby. I smiled and sang all the time. The Church had put my head back on straight. For the first time in my life I was really part of something My life had meaning. I worked hard for the Church and for myself, and finally they picked me for a different kind of work."

'this kind? Guns and bombs?"

'1t's God's work."

"You said you joined the Weather Underground, didn't you?"

'I didn't join them. It was sort of like cooperative, you know? They bought me a plane ticket out to Portland, and a fellow met me at the airport and drove me practically all day in an old car way down into empty country where they were. I thought I was in pretty good shape, you know? Talk about pooped! I used to get so tired I'd cry. But by three months, I could like run all day, you know? And I felt really alive. Then, when I could move right, they started all the other stuff. Weapons, marksmanship, cover and concealment, grenades, booby traps, reading a compass and maps, and all that. They taught me stuff I never heard of. You know, I could go into the average kitchen anywhere in the States, and in about twenty minutes I could build a bomb you wouldn't believe, just using what's already there."

Y forget where you said you went after that." irst I went back to Miami, and they took me... someplace where I met Sister Elena Marie, and it was the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me. She's fantastic. She knew all about me. She even seemed to know what I was thinking. She told me I was doing very well and I was one of the special ones planned by God for a special purpose. They got me a passport to Amsterdam and I went with a Brother who'd been there before and from there by car to Sofia, and he turned me over to some sort of official who took me out to the camp. It was a lot the same as Oregon, except different weapons and a lot of stuff I can't talk about And, well, I got back to Miami, let me see, this is right after Christmas, and so it must have been seven months ago, and so I've been here six months. And maybe it will be six more before we... begin."

'Begin?"

"You know. We have to be given our assignments and we have to have a lot of time studying and working and planning so that it will all be au- tomatic. Then we'll just, you know, go do them. It has to be all coordinated in order to work. We an have to be terribly, terribly careful."

41 saw you practicing something, you and Nena, and I think it was Haris and Ahman. Chuck was coaching and timing you."

Ah, hey, you shouldn't have seen that! Please don't tell anybody, or somebody will get in trouble for not figuring out maybe you could see it. We didn't know what would happen with you, and we

The Green Ripper thought you would probably be kiDed. Maybe that's why somebody got careless. But there is always the very small chance you could get away, and if you could make somebody believe you when you told what you saw, then it might make big problems here."

'~What were you doing? Your assignments?"

"Oh, no. That's just the Circle of Fire. It's all in the speed, getting ready. Then it's tricky how you set the weapons. You put them on full automatic but you have to learn to give just the quickest little touch. Bzzzzt, bzzzzt, bzzzzt, like not more than five or six shots each burst. You touch the trigger when the targets are thick enough in front of you. You keep it at belly level, because that's the way the most damage is done in a crowd."

Yes, indeed, I thought. Get the adults in the belly, the kids in the chest, and the littlies in the head bones.

'mill that be your assignment?"

"Oh, no. That would be a waste of people like us. They say there are people to do that who know how to do just that, and they're willing to do it. I think there's a special place where they train. They don't need as much physical training or training in a lot of different kinds of things. We were just doing it as a kind of a training exercise. That's all. So we can do it if we have to someday."

"It would be hard to do."

'`I know. I know." Her tone was subdued and thoughtful.

I didn't know where to take it from there. I had to assume the trailer was bugged. Yet she would know if it were, and she wasn't sufficiently guarded. She wasn't hesitant in the way people are who know the tape is turning.

"It's hard to see the point in doing it at all."

"Doing what?"

'Novell, killing innocent people."

'Innocent of what, Brother? If you kill soldiers or police, it doesn't make enough difference. They signed up to take that risk. The people in this country are oppressed and they don't know it, and they don't give a damn. All the rest of the world is involved in a bitter struggle, and here the people are fat, happy, and dumb. The captive press and the television keep telling them they are the best people in the world in the best country in the world. The dirt and pain and sickness and poverty are all covered up. No person has a chance against the capitalist bureaucracy. We've learned that little attacks here and there are meaningless. Like fighting a pillow. They actually think they're free, the fools, even while they are supporting a regime that exports arms all over the world to the other oppressors. We have to make this fat dumb happy public sit up and take notice of the hidden tyranny that is oppressing them. How do we do that?"

Such a lot of it was by rote, repeated from

The Green Ripper memory in a sentence structure alien to her usual patterns. "How do we do it, Sister?"

"We make the oppressors visible to the people by giving them reason to show how cruel and tough they can be. We force them to react. Like Chicago and Kent State, but much much more."

"By going out and kiUing people?"

'`That isn't the purpose, Brother. To kill people. Our civilization has gotten too complicated. It's full of machines and plastics. Brother Persival says it is very sick, and like a sick person, it can't survive if a lot of other things happen to it."

"Such as?"

"Oh, we won't go after things that are really protected, like army places and shipyards and nuclear power plants and government buildings. That's dumb. You can bring everything tumbling down by going after things that would take years to fix. Big gas pipelines and oil pipelines. Bridges and tunnels and big computer places. Refineries and chemical plants and control towers. TV stations and newspaper pressrooms. Blow 'em up and burn 'em down. Targets of opportunity. Anyway, it's all being worked out. And then we'll know what our part of it is. I hope I don't get stuff to do that's too hard. I mean I want to be able to get it done. Then if I get away, okay, and if I don't, okay. But Ed hate to mess up. I hope I don't get a tunnel. I get really itchy going through tunnels. I think of all that water coming down on me."

"How do you do a tunnel?"

"Two people and two vehicles, right? Lee one is an old truck. You've got a good big load of explosives, labeled something else. It takes a big blast. The lead car stops and you stop the truck and yank the wire that starts the three-minute timer. Then you run and get in the lead car and get out of there. It's the same for some kinds of bridges. I really don't want to do a tunnel. They make me so nervous 111 do something wrong."

She had turned onto her side, worked her head onto my shoulder. Her arm lay across my chest, her knees against the side of my thigh. She sighed and said, Y didn't have any interest in sex at all until I was in training overseas. Then it started to all come back. It's like that with most of the women who join. I mean the Church becomes the most important love life you have, and it wipes out every~bing else for a while. Then it's never as important again as it once was to you." She kissed the side of my throat and said, 'enough of all this talking already? You want to make * now?" She snugged the length of her body against me. This was a frightening little engine of destruction, all trained, primed, touthoned, waiting only for someone to aim it at a target. Her breath had a faint scent of the deerburger onions. Her hair smelled clean, and her body had a slight coppery odor of perspiration. I remembered noticing at the table that her fingernails were chewed down to the quick.

The Green Ripper

Poor lithe assassin. She had gone out into the world with an empty head, and somebody had crammed a single frightful idea into it, dressed up with a lot of important-sounding rhetoric. She couldn't know the frightfulness of the idea because she had nothing by which to measure it. Fifteen to forty groups of from eight to fifteen? From a hundred and twenty to six hundred of them. So take the smallest number, cut it in half, and think about sixty people like this one, armed, mobilized, superbly equipped, and aimed at the pressure points of our culture.

I remembered one of Meyer's concepts about cultural resiliency. In the third world, the village of one thousand can provide itself with what it needs for survival. Smash the cities and half the villages, and the other half keep going. In our worbl, the vii" lage of one thousand has to import water, fuel, food, clothing, medicine, electric power, and entertainment. Smash the cities and an the viBages die. And the city itself is frail. It has little nerve-center nodules. Water plant, power transmission lines, telephone switching facilities.

I was begmmog to learn the purpose behind Brother Titus, and the reason for all the extraordinary caution.

And if that extraordinary caution carried over to an things, and assuming the trailer was not bugged, then Stella would be asked to give a report about her lovemaking with Brother Thomas.

"Oh, all we did was talk. He asked ~ lot of questions and we talked, and then after all that, he didn't want to. He said he wasn't gay, but he just didn't feel like it."

She had begun to use her hooker skills, and I had begun to respond to her. After all, what the helL She was skillful and knowing. To her I was a tumescence of a certain length and girth, differing hardly at all from the many hundreds of others. Emotions need not be involved. I would think only of sensation. It did not have to have anything to do with mind and memory. As I began to switch roles from submission to domination, I told myself I could not, in any circumstances, Mink about the face and body and love of Gretel Howard.

I sagged back beside Stella and she said, "Hey, what happens?"

'Em sorry."

"Did something about me put you off, honey?"

"No. It wasn't anything like that I Vhat then?"

'I don't know."

This sure isn't turning out to be one of my better nights."

'Tm sorry."

"Look, Fm not sore. You know what I think it was? It was being conned into shooting Nicky like you did. Something like that, if you're not used to it, can really shake you up inside. And then me coming in here like this when you weren't expecting

The Green Ripper it. And after all, Brother, you are not some eighteen-year-old guy who can get it off before he's unzipped. These things happen. Don't worry about me. I lost it too. Too much talking."

"rm sorry."

'4Let's just talk. I kind of like talking to you. And maybe we can have a little nap, and after that maybe we'll both be okay again, you know? How about that?"

'`All right."

"You sure I didn't spoil it for you somehow?',

'`No. You're... an attractive woman."

'`I'm not much. Eve got a pretty good body, compared to most. But I've got this tough yellowy skin, and if you look close, one eye points out a little bit, the right one. And the receding jaw. You know, I was saving up for an operation, a fellow that puts some kind of bone from your hip or someplace back here by the corners of your jaw and that pushes it forward, and then they fix your bite. I saw before-and-after pictures. It would really make a big difference. But that's vanity, isn't it? 1~11 be twenty-six in two months. I used to think about marriage and babies. I think I'd be okay with babies. Better than they were with me, I know.- My dad broke two fingers on my left hand once, grabbing me when he lost his temper. They say if you've been abused, you abuse your own. I can't believe that. I'd be okay with kids. But there's no point in even thinking about it now, is there? By this time next year, I'll probably be dead. Like Nicky. He just went a little ahead of the rest of us."

"Are they supposed to be suicide missions?"

'`Not really. Everybody is supposed to do their best to get away. And we'll be given a staging area to go to where we can be regrouped and re- equipped and given new assignments. But if a person keeps doing it, how many times can you get away?"

"Everything will be in a state of confusion."

"You can believe it."

"But you know who is going to suffer the most, don't you?"

"Sure. The bottom layer of society. The poor and the minorities and the old ones. They won't have the money to take care of themselves when the food and the water and the medicines run out. They won't be able to run. That's when they'll rise up against the state. Then there'll be some kind of burning and killing. That's when the whole thing goes to hell for sure."

"And who takes charge after that's all over?"

"The Church has plans, Brother. Big plans. You just wait. Big plans." Her voice trailed away and her breathing changed and deepened. A woman of her times. Ready to aim the Circle of Fire, belly high Happy to be caressed, glad to make love. Good with babies, and no good with tunnels.

I had blundered into something extraordinary. A

The Green Ripper cult that was a cover for a deadly activism. Supported by curious international cooperations. I wished I could talk to Meyer about it. I really had nothing to go on. I knew the temporary location of nine people and a cache of arms and explosives. One out of fifteen or forty of unknown size and location, of unknown target date. Meyer had said, many times, that we run a strange kind of country in the mod- ern world. Customs and Immigration are in a sense token services. Any plausible-looking person can find many ways to come and go unimpeded. Anything that can be flown or Boated can be brought in or taken out. We are a wide place in the road in the middle of the world, and they wander through, back and forth, marveling at the lack of restraints. It is, Meyer pointed out, a paradox. The openness which endangers our system is the product of the policy which says that to close our borders and enforce all our rules and back them up with guns would change the system just as completely as any alien force.

I hoped there were enough tough young men like Max and Jake. I hoped somebody had this whole operation taped and wired. I hoped there were long lenses peering through the pine forests, and a lot of career people making little marks on important maps.

Gray daylight was seeping into the trailer when I awakened. She was standing beside the bunk, pull ing the long T-shirt down over her head, smoothing it to the contours of her hips with the backs of her hands.

She smiled and leaned and kissed me lightly. "Hey, we slept too long. I got to go on kitchen duty. We11 try it another time?"

"Sure."

"Listen, don't worry about me saying anything, okay? I mean about you couldn't get it up. You're worried about a lot of things. All this is new to you, right? And your daughter missing and all. Anybody asks me, I'll say we like to screwed ourselves to death."

"Thanks, Sister." :

Don't you worry about a Ding. Everything is going to be okay for you here. We'll an be looking out for you, Brother Thomas."

I heard the door close and she was gone. I rolled up in the two scratchy blankets and thought about Gretel in her agony, Gretel on fire. I knew how she would react if I could tell her she had been a victim of some kind of crazy political action cult, of people who wanted to remake the world by tearing it down and starting all over again. Cave people, trying to reinvent penicillin, Zippo lighters, and disco.

It has nothing to do with me, I told Gretel. I never think about stuff like this. It hurts my head. I think about the blue sea and tan ladies and straight

The Green Ripper gin with lots of ice. I think about how high out of the water a marlin might go, and how much of Meyer's chili I can eat, and how very good piano sounds in the nighttime. I think about swimming until I hurt, running until I wheeze, driving good cars and good boats and good bargains. Sure, I do my little knightlike thing, restoring goodies to the people from whom they were improperly wrested, doing battle with the genuinely evil bastards who prey on the gullible, helpless, and innocent. I was going to keep on doing that from time to time, to support you and me, girl, in the style we like best, if you had consented. I know from nothing about terrorism, funny churches, and exotic murder weapons, like the one they killed you with.

But here I am. In a sense, I was hunting for you.

I have killed one of them in a strange way. And nearly made love to another. I am in it now. I am going to let them run me and see what happens. And I swear before whatever gods there be, including even the one these crazies bow down to, that if they give me the faintest whispery breath of a chance, I am going to blow them all away, every one, without mercy, without hesitation. If I saw a fire starting in a kindergarten, I would throw water on it.

One down and nine to go. This time, my dead love, I am not doing my knightly routine. I have shelved that as inappropriate for the occasion. The old tin-can knight had too many compunctions, scruples, whatevers. For this caper, I am the iceman. I have come here and brought the ice. It is a delivery service. One time only.

On Thursday, two days after Christmas, I had my first experience of listening to Sister Elena Marie. It was set up at midafternoon in a small cement-block building the same size as the one where I had been locked up.

Chairs and stools were brought in. The camp generator was cranked up. A Sony color set rested on a low table, with a videotape deck beside it. Blankets were hung to shut out the light from the two windows. There was a feeling of expectancy, a muted excitement. Alvor was the only one missing. Stella sat close beside me.

Persival, almost invisible in the dimness, said, '~et us pray. Our Father, we thank thee for the op portunities which are being given to us. We are humbly grateful to be given- a chance to play a part in the great events which will reshape life in this world and the future of humanity. We pray that we will be worthy of your trust in us. Our strength, our resolve, our determination, will all flow from your endless power. Since last we met in this room, one of us has been taken to your kingdom. Forgive our Brother Nicholas for his transgressions, his failure to comprehend the stern disciplines required of your children. There is a new one among us, a Brother Thomas, who came to us in search of his daughter and who has been thinking of remaining with us, adopting our Vows, our ways, and our great mission. He is still uncertain, Lord. He is still confused. We are healing his lonely heart. Please give him the understanding of us and our ways so that he may join with us in our resolve, that he may become willing to sacrifice himself if necessary, in your bidding. We are thankful to you for providing this chance to hear, now, our beloved Sister Elena Marie speak your words from her heart. We are together, Lord. We are all as one. We are all united together in your holy cause. Amen."

Chuck stepped forward and switched the set on, and when it warmed up, he turned on the Betama~c with the tape ready to roll.

The head and shoulders of Sister Elena Marie fined the screen. She stood silently, making a strong eye contact with everyone who looked into that

The Green Ripper screen. She was in color, long warm chestnut hair with golden lights in it. It hung to her shoulders. Oval face, clear features, a look of breeding and composure. Minimal makeup. Byes of a most unusual shade of blue, almost a lavender blue. Wide eyes, set far apart. Flawless complexion, but with the small signs of age. I guessed her at about thirty-six to thirty-eight. Broad mouth with both lips equally heavy.

There was background music, soft music, an organ doodling with simple chords, as when the crowd has assembled, awaiting a wedding. Or a funeral service.

The music trailed off. She took a step closer to the camera. Just the face filled the screen. It was not a professional production. The camera was evidently stationary. No detail of the shadowy background was visible.

"Brothers and Sisters of the great Church of the Apocrypha," she said. Contralto resonance. Lovely diction. She could have played the Mrs. Miniver part with distinction. 'A am looking into your eyes, your special individual eyes, the windows of your soul. I am looking through your eyes, into your heart, into your deepest thoughts. There is nothing you can possibly think that would surprise or dismay me, or make me love you the less. I know of all the dark and evil places that exist in every man and woman, the places we hide from each other and even from ourselves. It is only by joining to

"ether we can overwhelm the darkness within and the darkness without."

She paused for several seconds, widening her lovely eyes slightly. I did have the impression that she was looking further inside me than I wanted her to.

'Mach one of you has a special place in my heart. I do not love you as a group. One cannot love people en masse, in the abstract. I love you for yourself, for the struggles you have made in the name of goodness and justice and freedom in the world, and for the sacrifices you will make in the future. Though I appear to be talking to everyone in this room, I am talking to you alone. To you!"

Pause. Slow bat of long eyelashes and a half smile, personal and almost sensuous.

'~e are alone, you know. You and I. Everyone. But we have found something which eases the pain of the essential loneliness of every human. We are together in our purpose. We are all part of one an- other, forever. In all the endless dying and rebirthing, in all the aeons of time over which we will return here, again and again, we will know and recognize one another, just as we have during this time on earth, and if in some future time it is necessary for all of us to come together again, and save the world and humanity from an epoch of commercial slavery, cruelty, and shameful exploitation, then we win do so, we of the Apocrypha!"

Her voice had risen and strengthened. Though I

The Green Ripper couldn't decide what she was saying, I found it very stirring. It was flattering somehow to be part of a purpose so great that it overlapped all the thousands of years ahead.

She moved back just a little, then gave a smile of apology. '`Now I must ask you once again for pa- tience. We must proceed with the greatest caution or lose the element of surprise on which we must depend. Our many friends in other nations are helping us, just as they promised. You know that perhaps even better than I. Some small arrange- ments have been delayed for the sake of greater safety. The transport of incoming supplies is a delicate problem, and it is being solved every day. And every day more of us are being trained. 11Varehousing, transport, and supply. Everyone is working very very hard on these problems. There is always the danger of penetration of security. Be ever alert. Our technical staff is identifying more pressure points as time goes by. Think of it this way. The longer we have to wait, the greater the blow we can strike. Continue with your training. You are the soldiers of the Lord! You will put him back upon his throne on earth, and you will live all of your days in peace and love and freedom forever."

She closed her eyes, and the lights that shone upon her face and hair were slowly, slowly dimmed until the screen was dark. The Betamaac made a clacking sound, and Chuck leaped to turn it off, then sat again.

Persival said, "Sister Nena, please give the closing prayer."

She was behind me. I heard her stand. "Dear Lord, we thank thee for the privilege of hearing Sister Elena Marie speak your words with her sweet lips. Grant us the patience to endure the waiting, and the skill and the bravery to overcome all odds when at last we march in thy service. Amen."

She rattled it off so quickly I knew * was rote, and I suspected that I was probably the only one in the room who could not say the usual closing prayer.

Someone pulled the blankets away from the windows, and we were suddenly all squinting in the bright afternoon light. I looked at the television set and the tape deck. They were standard consumer items. But the way they were used was very professional. Very effective. These people seemed exalted by what they had heard. They beamed at each other and touched each other in ways of affection. I did an appropriate amount of beaming and touching. They were holding Sister Elena Marie in their hearts. She had come across to each one of us as an individual. She spoke to aloneness, in warmth and comfort.

I asked Brother Chuck if there were any old tapes I could hear.

'Eve don't keep any around. We'll show this one

The Green Ripper again tonight, and everybody will want to hear it again. Then I erase it and put it back in the mailer and send it on back. They dupe the ones for the camps from a master they make at headquarters."

He looked at me with a telltale intentness. It was the game of which hand holds the marble. I got in- stantaneous help from my actress friend of long ago. Tom McGraw would ask.

'where is headquarters anyway?"

"Classified," he said, smiling, whacking me on the arm.

"When do we get the next one?"

"There's no schedule. When she has something to say to us, she makes a tape, and they dupe it and send it out. They cost a lot, those tapes, so they get sent back blank to be reduped."

I wandered on out. I illed an item in the back of my mind. Somewhere in America, Betamax tapes were being sent in to a central place. If they were saving money on tape, they wouldn't be wasting it using couriers. If it were my problem, I'd use the mails. And I would have a permanent filler on the first fifteen minutes of each tape. They would be plainly labeled as church property, and they would have some old duck in a backward collar reading a dissertation on the philosophical impact of Martin Luther on political thought in middle Burope. And then the Sister. I would have them sent to a mail drop for courier pickup and delivery to home

197

John MacDonald base. So if I happened to find the mailing address, it would probably give me no help at ale

I sat through it again that evening, and the impact of her was intensified, if anything. She did not fade. She just seemed to get stronger. And it was difficult to shake the illusion that she was looking directly at me. I could not estimate how big a woman she was. There was nothing to compare her to. She was in perfect proportion and could have been three feet tall or seven and a half. Dark-blue velvety dress with lace at the throat. No jewelry.

After it was over, Persival got me aside and said, 'I want you working out with the group tomorrow. Any objection?"

'spiel No. No objection. Only, what is being done to locate where my little girl is?"

"They're trying to find her, and when they do, they'll let me know immediately. Report to Brother Chuck at eight sharp. Field exercises." swearing what?"

"Ask him now."

Chuck told me we weren't leaving the land the Church owned, one full section of land, mostly up and down and sideways, so we'd wear fatigues, a light pack, and an ammo belt, and carry a weapon. He and Ahman took me over to supply, after Chuck got the key. The biggest fatigues were a little high in the allele and short at the wrist I explained my shoe problem, and they found a pair of size twelve sneakers and some thick nylon-and-wool

The Green Ripper socks. Ahman threw me the weapon, harder than he had to. The light was bad, just the single bulb going inside the warehouse door, and I didn't grab it close enough to the balance point, so the muzzle end tapped me over the ear, drawing a drop of blood.

"Watch it," I told him.

'snatch out for yourself, Brother," he said.

What is this thing anyway?"

"It's an Uzi," Chuck said. 'made in Israel."

"Very small and light. Good weapon?"

Ahman shrugged and said, "You won't be firing it. AU you do is carry it. You'll be glad it's light bee fore the day is over. Some friends picked up a couple of trucldoads of these in Lebanon. So we've got some. Makes for nice confusion. Remember what Aren't said after Camp David? He said there hadn't been any terrorism in the United States, and now they had proved themselves ready for some. For a lot, baby. A big lot. So when they bring down some of the brothers and sisters with Israeli weapons, they'll wonder what the hell, won't they?"

I carried my issue gear back to T-6. The sneakers felt right with two pairs of the socks. I found the right hole for the belt, filled the canteen, and positioned it at a better place on the belt. Chuck had told me I would be carrying twenty pounds of rock in the backpack, so I made careful adjustment of the straps, bringing die padding to the exact place where the straps hit the tops of my shoulders. Then

I inspected the Uziunder the light. It hadn't been built for pretty. It was an ugly, simple, straighfforward little weapon. The empty clip snapped into place easily. It had a good balance, and a simple three-way control for safety, single fire, and full automatic. It looked designed for quantity production. I couldn't give it full approval until I had a chance, if ever, to ilre it. Then I would learn the cycle of fire and whether it would ride up at fun automatic, or whether the gases were diverted just right to make it easy to hold on target. It hung well over the shoulder on its fat little sling and came off the shoulder fast, with your hands faring into the right position. I had heard that since I had been around this kind of hardware they had upped the cycle of iIre, upped the muzzle velocity to practically double, and reduced the weight of the projectile. A man could carry a lot more rounds into a firelight, do just as much damage with each hit, and hit oftener.

I was up early and observed the usual routine of the others that wherever I strolled, somebody was keeping an eye on me. Brother Thomas was an unknown quantity.

When I had been wakeful in the night, I had realized that my assumption that they would mail the tapes had to be wrong. This outfit preferred to take no chances at ale It had to be a hand-delivery sys

The Green Ripper tem, and so it would do no good at all to try to find a return address.

When I went back to sleep I dreamed of Sister Elena Marie, smiling at me, talking to me. It was very important that I understand what she was saying, but I could only catch a word or phrase here and there, and they were in a foreign language I could not even identify. She was telling me how to get around behind the screen, back to where she was, and she was becoming angry because I couldn't understand what she was telling me. If I could get on the same side of the screen as Sister Elena Marie, then Gretel would be spared. When I yelled at her in rage, it woke me up agam.

I ate little because I had a good idea of what they were going to try to do to me. I guessed they could probably run me into the ground. But out of pride I wanted to make them have to stretch to do it.

They had six hundred and forty very rugged acres. It was a bright chilly day, at first. Chuck ran the group with whistle signals. I had to be briefed on those. Most of it was standard operating procedure for patrols. Infiltration, cover and concealment, giving covering fire, without ammo. It involved a lot of running. I had a fifteen-year disad- vantage with most of them, and I was carrying eighty more pounds uphill than were the two girls. But they wasted energy in random movements. I husbanded every ounce, made no unnecessary step.

I was sweating heavily by late morning, and they all looked dry. They were conditioned.

There were special little moments of humiliation. Once when we had crossed a swollen creek and were going up an abrupt rocky slope on the other side, I got so winded near the top that I was grabbing sman trees to yank myself along. As I was doing that, Stella went by me, running uphill on tiptoe, deft as a goat, and turned to give me a smile and a quick wink before leaving me behind, looking uphill at the bounding flex of those hips under the tough denim.

At another time, when I was breathing with my mouth open, gulping air hungrily, I sucked in a large California beetlebug, coughed him out violently, and couldn't stop coughing. But I was damned if I was going to say uncle. I was ready to drop first and be carried in. And I was also ready to cheat. I had weeded my twenty pounds of rock down to about three pounds. It helped.

When I was down to counting the minutes before I would probably pitch forward onto my face, I was saved by misadventure. Sister Nena took a good fast run to clear a creek, jumped well, and landed on a stone that turned as her foot struck *. She fell heavily on gravel, equipment clanking, and moaned as she reached for her right ankle. Her olive complemon was a yellow-white, her eyes squeezed by pain. I was first to reach her, and carefully unlaced

The Green Ripper the sodden sneaker and eased it off, then peeled the sock down and off her foot.

Chuck knelt beside me, and The others stood around looking down at her. "Busted?" he asked.

I told her to hold on tight, and I slowly manipulated the ankle joint. She sucked air. I made her work it herself. I knew from wide experience it wasn't bad.

"Just a little sprain, I ark, but you shouldn't walk on it right away."

Chuck looked around at the slope of The land, the direction of distant peaks. "About a half mile back," he said.

Barry was wearing a macho silk scarf, off-white. Chuck wrapped The ankle tightly and tied it in place. I said I could carry her back. She said she could hobble and hop. She said it was her own damn clumsiness. Barry said he'd carry her. I said he could take over when I got tired. I didn't tell him I was already so tired I wondered if I could make a half mile by myself. Suddenly Me sun was covered and the rain began to fall again. Chuck took my pack, hefted it, looked at me with a raised eyebrow, and dumped out the remaining rocks. Two of them. Apple-size. Barry took the weapon. Nena stood up on one foot, with Stella helping her balance. I bent and put my shoulder in her middle and had her lean forward as I stood up with her, my right arm wrapped around her legs lust above her knees. She was smallish but solid. The rain rem freshed me. It cooled me off. I made pretty good time. A few times I lost my footing on the uneven ground, and when I caught myself it would drive my shoulder into her middle, making her gasp. And each time I apologized, and each time she told me not to bother. SteDa walked behind me, telling Nena how soon she would be up and around, which I knew was true. Barry offered twice to take over, but I said I was fine. I made it back in with her and, at Chuck's direction, took her to the trailer she shared with Stella. It was larger and older than mine. I bent over and knelt and perched her on the edge of her bunk, and she thanked me with an unanticipated shyness.

After the noon meal they went out again in the rain, but I was excused.

'we're doing some target work'" Chuck explained. "We do it in bad weather when sound doesn't carry well and there's less chance of hikers around the perimeter."

'] could use some brushup on that."

"You're not cleared for live ammo, Brother."

'brother Persival is the one who'd clear me?"

'~hen you're ready."

'~What kind of weapon is that?"

He showed it- to me but didn't let me handle it. "Pretty good. Better than it looks. It's Russian. Ka- lashnikov Assault Rifle. It's got a good reach, and it's fast and accurate enough. Of course, for real long-range accuracy, we've got better stuff. Scopes

The Green Ripper and all. Haris is the best one here at that game. He can hit a pie plate at a thousand meters on a still day."

"Good for Brother Haris."

'Is that being sarcastic or something, Brother?"

"No. I mean it's good shooting."

"Yes, it is." Off he trotted, tootling his whistle.

The camp seemed empty. I knew that Nena was in her quarters. I wandered around, wondering who was watching me. Somebody had to be on the gate. Alvor the silent one, if they hadn't rotated the duty. Persival had to be somewhere.

I thought it out during my aimless stroll in the misty rain. I had not passed any test. I had not proved anything to anybody. So somebody wanted to know how badly I wanted to take off. Would I go down the road or start out cross-country? What would Tom McGraw do? They had an Tom's money, and they were trying to locate his girl. So why not use up a piece of the rainy afternoon calling on the pretty little woman he had carried back to camp? Ask her how she was doing.

I rapped on the door and she called, "Come in?"

"How you doing?"

"Okay, I guess. I was so damn mad at myself. Sister Nena, the gazelle. See how she floats through the air." She was on the bunk. She had been reading.

'~What's the book?"

She closed it and handed it to me. Worn binding, dog-eared pages. The Loving Elect by Sister Elena Marie. "Hasn't anyone given it to you yet?"

'first I ever heard of it."

"You should read it. You should have your own copy. I guess somebody just forgot. It's wonderful. She's a great woman, truly great. I miss seeing her. I used to see her when I was in the regular camps. She used to visit. She still does that sometimes, I think."

"How long ago was that?"

"Five years. More than five. Nearly six."

"Back when you were twelve years old?"

She laughed. "Hardly. I'm t~venty-eight."

"You don't look it. Nobody would guess. Were you at more than one of the regular camps?"

"Oh, sure. You get moved around. They don't want you to sink roots anywhere except in the Church. And a lot of us get moved because family has come to try to take us home. When we're already home in the best sense of the word. My mother spent a lot of time and money trying to find me and take me away. But that was a long time ago."

"Where is she now?"

"I wouldn't have the faintest clue, Brother. She is nothing to me. I have no interest in her."

"She's your mother, dike Fm Kathy's father."

'7hat's a biological happenstance, Brother Thomas. I don't think we'll discuss that further. You have

The Green Ripper no right of approval or disapproval over anything I do or think or am."

'Tm just trying to understand is ale"

'~Don't try. Just accept. You're not open enough, Brother. You are closed up tight Sister Elena Marie says there are answers which have to come before the questions."

"Makes no sense to me."

&e looked at me with exasperation. "Will you try something with me? Will you let me try to show you something? Will you really try to cooperate, by that I mean letting things happen that try to happen?"

"Sure. Try what?"

"Can you sit there, on the floor, and cross your legs Buddha style?"

I sat and managed it, with a certain amount of creaking, saying, 'untangling myself will be some" thing else again."

She smiled and settled down in front of me, not wincing at all as she moved her taped ankle into position, so close that our Knees touched. "We take each other's hands like this, so that you are feeling the pulse here, in my left wrist, and I am feeling your pulse in your left wrist. Let the hands and forearms rest like this. Yes, so there's no strain. After a little while, if we are doing it right, our pulse rates will become identical, and quite slow. Like sixty beats per minute. Now you look into my eyes, not in any sharp focus because then you look at one eye or the other. Kind of unfocus a little, so you see them both. Unfocus as if you were looking beyond me. You can feel my pulse? Good. Now what you have to do is take long slow breaths. On each in- halation you say three words very slowly and distinctly inside your head. We are one. And you say it silently and in the same rhythm as you exhale. 1311 match my breathing to yours, and then it should stay matched without my thinking about it. You say the words until they are meaningless, just sounds, like a mantra. What you have to do is concentrate on looking into my eyes and trying to hear the silent words I am saying. Try to hear my words inside your head and I try to hear yours inside mine. Stay aware of the pulse and the slow breathing. Keep your back straight and your eyes just a little unfocused. And try to kind of... give yourself to it, and let it happen. Start now. No, wait. I forgot. Don't let any outside thoughts come into your head. If you start to think of anything beside pulse, breathing, looking, listening, and the words, it sets you back. Okay. Go."

So I felt like an idiot. Sitting on the Boor of an old trailer, doing some kind of mantra thing with a flaky female terrorist. But I did as directed. When Meyer was into hypnosis, he had me doing some odd things. I was difficult at first, until I realized that it wouldn't hurt me to try to cooperate. Then he could manage it. It delighted him. Going under seemed to make a little roaring sound in my head,

The Green Ripper reminiscent of the first few seconds before one passes out. I did as I was told, looking into Nena's dark wide eyes, and soon the little roaring sound started, taking me into a different level of con- sciousness. We are one. Quite suddenly I could hear her voice inside my head instead of my own. And I could no longer see the rest of her face with my peripheral vision, only her eyes. The breathing seemed to be becoming much slower. Her pulse was a very slow steady throb against my finger pad. It was all sensation, without thought. Going on and on and on.

I was aware that she had ended it. Her hands were gone from mine. Contact broken. It was like coming slowly up from the bottom of a deep clear POOL seeing the sunlight on the surface above. I gave myself a slow shake, like an old wet dog, and looked at her.

She was flushed, and looking at me oddly.

'~What's the matter?" I asked her. uncorked pretty good."

'] know. Better than with most people when it's the first time. I didn't expect that. Knowmg your background. Only the most sensitive and imaginative and intelligent people go into semuanh balk so quick."

"Semu-what?"

'?t's an Indonesian phrase. It means everything is all right. Don't worry. Be reassured. Sister Elena

Marie says it is synergy. One person plus one person equals more than two persons."

"Were you telling me Pm some kind of dummy?"

"No. It's just very strange you should get so deeply into it the very first time. It was... very stirring. And it makes a person feel very sexy."

"I noticed." She was still frowning at me. I felt certain she would report this unexpected facility to Persival and it would rekindle his doubts. I said, quickly, "I wed to have this partner Pd go netting with. I wed to get these headaches all the time. He said he could hypnotize me out of them, and he tried and toed and tried, and when he was about to give up, I finally went under. It helped a lot. So when you started this semu-something, it felt like it did when he was putting me under, so I let myself go."

She stopped frowning and gave a brisk little nod. "Of course. That would be it, wouldn't it? We we it to reinforce the joining together. When people be" gin to have doubts, when they begin to think they're not strong enough for what the Church demands, then they can do semuanja balk and be strengthened and refreshed. When I listen to Sister Elena MaAe on the tape, I get sort of the same feeling Not as intense, but it's there. That farawayness. Brother Persival says it's that quality that made her such a success when she was an evangelist. When she used to broadcast, with a choir of two hundred voices, from the Tabernacle

The Green Ripper in Biloxi. That was before she founded the Church of the Apocrypha, before she had taken the name Sister Elena Marie."

"What did her name used to be?"

"I wouldn't tell you except she was so well known a lot of people know it. She was Bobbie Jo Annison. She started preaching the gospel when she was sixteen. They got up to over a hundred and fifty stations toward the end, and she took in mil- lions of dollars for good works. But she decided it was not the true faith, and there were too many ad- visers trying to run things, and the government was after her for taxes and all. And she decided that it was vanity that had taken over for piety, being on the air so much. So she quit and she founded our Church. Maybe it was about nine years ago, or ten. There used to be things in the magazines. Whatever happened to Bobbie Jo Annison? I expect you heard the name before."

'It sounds kind of familiar, but I was never much for turning on television for anything at all."

"She is the greatest woman who ever lived."

"You mean that?"

'I would die for her. I probably will die for her, and be reborn into my own identity in the next in- carnation. That's the reward for dying for the Church. Sometimes, after I have prayed a long time, and very hard, suddenly I can hear her voice inside my head saying my words in her voice to the

Lord. Sister Stella can make that happen too. It's wonderful when it happens." Her face glowed.

"Speaking of Stella, maybe you can tell me the ground rules around here. I don't want to get into trouble."

"Because she came to your bed? No, there is no objection. It could have been suggested to her. I didn't ask and she didn't tell mu If the two of you slept only with each other, that would be bad."

'Is that rule in Sister Elena Marie's book?"

'`Not in this book. In another of her books there is a chapter about sharing. She says that making love should be a simple function, and not be given too much importance in this era. She says that when we were all alive in earlier centuries, it was different. We were all faithful to JUSt one person, and it was good and natural and right. And when we come back to earth again, in future centuries, it will probably be like that again. But now, in this world, if we begin to think too much of some other person, it will make us weak in our duty as soldiers in the Army of the Lord. We might forget our own mission in trying to save another person from hurt."

"Ig this sharing okay in the other camps that aren't special? Like when my little girl was here?"

"Oh, no. You have to be celibate your first few years in the Church. You must give up everything for the Church. But we in special training have proved we will not be weakened by sexual pleasure, and if we wish *, it is permitted."

The Green Ripper

"As long as you spread it around."

'As that some kind of a dirty joke to you?"

'A didn't know any other way to say it, Nena."

"You must call me Sister Nena, nothing else."

"How did you come to get selected for this training?"

'everyone in the Church is watched. Actually they are testing all of us all the time, keeping track of the ones with the strongest faith and the strongest, quickest bodies. When they told me I had been selected for special training, I didn't even know what kind of training it would be. Now I know, and Ill do whatever they ask of me."

'Mike blow up some kindergartens?"

"You really don't understand, do you? The most bloody, savage, awful acts that seem the most pointless, they're the ones that are most productive. They revolt and shock everyone, and that puts terrible pressure on the central government and local governments to crack down on ad the people who are nonconformist in any way. When that happens, the resentment makes rebels out of the conformists too, and pretty soon the whole structure crumbles."

"And you can do these terrible things, Sister Nena?"

'A might be asked to do things that will make me feel sort of sick to my stomach. But I'll be proud of the chance to do them. I'm exalted to think 1~11 be part of something that's going to change the world. I'm proud of finally finding something in my life that makes sense, Brother Thomas. Has your life really made sense to you?"

"Sense? I don't know. I've had a few laughs. I've had some real good days. And some black black ones. Who says things have to make sense?"

"We want it to. Every one of us. We don't understand it, and Sister Elena Marie sorts it all out for us."

"Well, I wish I could go see the lady and let her explain it all to me."

"You saw the tape. Didn't that help?"

'A guess so. A little bit."

"Brother Thomas, we are all getting very fond of you, you know. We are enjoying having you with us. Please don't have doubts. Just don't think about it. Be open. And when the time comes, Brother Persival will have a mission for you, and you will want to perform it properly and please us all."

'Is that a first name or a last name? Persival."

"I really don't know. One of the rules of the Church is that everyone has just one name. And you can pick any part of your first name or last name, or you can make up a name, and then it is yours forever."

"Don't you get a lot of duplications?"

"Of course. What difference does that make? We don't pay taxes and we're not on social security and there is no payroll."

"Then it could be tough locating my little girl Kathy."

The Green Ripper

'En all the regular camps there must be hundreds of Kathys. People are supposed to forget their last names. So even if they paged her in all the regular camps, she might not answer."

"The boss lady has two names."

'YPlease don't call her that! She is the only person who is allowed to have two names. The only one in the whole Church."

I had untangled myself, and the feeling was coming back into my legs. She was back on the bed. By the way she moved I could see she no longer had an anlde problem.

"Well, take care of yourself, Sister Nena."

She smiled at me. "Sure. Sister Stella is very fond of you, did you know that?"

'A thought we were all very fond of each other. Isn't that the house rule?"

She pursed her lips as she stared at me. "Sometimes when you sound sarcastic you are like another person."

"In what way?"

'Y don't really know."

I changed the subject. "Better stay off that ankle as much as you can."

"It's okay now. But thanks for carrying me."

I stepped down out of the trailer and closed the tin door. The misty rain had stopped. I did not see anyone around. I took a bath in the creek and changed to my other set of clothes and washed out the coveralls.

As I scrubbed away, I thought about my very few options. I could stay here and keep my head down and try to get a line on where their headquarters might be located, then try to sneak away somehow and report to that memorized phone number. I could plan and carry out some kind of group ambush, kill every one of them, and then hunt through an their stuff for clues about the rest of the organization. But even if I could see myself executing an these crazies, little girls and all, my ability to do it was questionable. They were trim and tough and wary. Splendid reflexes. I could hang around until my mission, and then defect once I was at sea on the boat I was going to have to buy. By that time things would be popping all over the country, am patently. Sniping, fires, explosions, massacres, and God knows what all.

And once again I saw Gretel's face, the way the fever had wasted her, saw her chest pumping as the machine breathed for her, saw the laugh-lines around her dying eyes.

And I thought then of a provisional plan. Nicky was dead. Maybe they would find out I wasn't what I had pretended to be. If so, the odds might be improved between now and then. Nine to one read better than ten to one... a little better. Keep the eyes open. Improvise.

I stood up quickly, turning as I rose, and saw a

The Green Ripper dicker of movement beyond a big tree a hundred feet away. Suspicion confirmed. Keep an eye on Brother Thomas, but without giving yourself away. And we'll see what he does.

Well, he just hung around and washed himself and some clothes. He spent an hour with Sister Nena He doesn't seem to want to take off.

That night I got up from the table and went over to where Persival sat with Alvor. I said, 'Y don't see any good reason why you have to hang onto my money."

"People in the Church have no need of money."

'Tm not in the Church yet." our money is safe."

"You give me a list of the regular camps where my Kathy might be, and I'll go check them out, and then I'll come back here whether I find her or not."

"Would you try to take her away from the camp?"

"No. I just want to see how she looks grown up, and tell her that her ma is dead. That's all. I want to make sure she's alive."

'we're trying to locate her for you."

"You keep telling me that."

"What need would you have for money here? Ies safe. Now go back and sit down, Brother. You're doing fine here. Don't spoil it."

"Suppose I decided to leave anyway."

They looked up at me. Brother Alvor had eyes like dry pebbles. Brother Persival said, '`Then we'll bury you beside Brother Nicholas and say a prayer over you. And make do without you."

I know the truth when I hear it. I went back to the other table. The others were finishing. They looked at me with curiosity, but asked no questions.

They resumed their conversation. Chuck was being the instructor again. Topic, thermite pencils. "Remember, they maintain a temperature of twelve hundred degrees Fahrenheit for ten minutes. They aren't like the older ones we had. Those were too complicated. You twist this end one full turn, and that breaks the seal so that the acid starts to eat through the barner. It will take two hours to eat through, plus or minus ten minutes. Remember, the secret is saturation. A team of four can start at a designated point in the heart of a city, and each head out in a different direction like the spokes of a wheel, on foot. The cover story is the distribution of pamphlets. Each team member can carry and distribute two hundred pencils. You've read the list of preferred types of locations. You walk ten blocks out from the primary target area and fLen, a half hour later, walk the circumference of an imaginary wheel, building a circle of future fire around the heart of the city. In that way you can trap most of the fire fighting organizations between the two ilres, and also we're told that this dispersion is the most effective way of creating a fire storm."

He was still talking when I walked out.

218

13

On Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, the last three days of the year, I tried to find out everything I could about the area. I located everyone's quarters and realized there was room for twice as many. Haris told me there had been more travel trailers, and what was now the warehouse had been a bunkhouse, capable of accommodating a hundred and fifty.

The one time I had looked into the warehouse, I had seen, in the light of the small bulb near the door, towering stacks of crates and boxes. It seemed to be much more than these few people could use or carry.

On Monday I learned by accident of one deadly item they were warehousing. It was obvious I had no chance to get in there. I happened upon Ahman out behind the small mess hall, where the grass grew tan and coarse. He was backing away, looking intently at the grass. I did not see what he was looking at for a few moments, and then I saw it, a cylinder about three feet high, three inches in circumference.

"Hard to see it?" he asked. "I've been trying different ways of painting it. The damn things came through all shiny. I striped this one green and brown, vertically. It seems to work the best. Kind of wavy lines, like the grass."

I wallred toward it with him. 'what is it?"

"It's a little rocket." Vhat does it do?"

'It does what rockets do, Brother. It goes whoosh-b~m."

Thanks a lot."

He hesitated, then said, 'It's on a spike, see? You shove it into the ground at a little slant. You find a good place, a half mile from the end of a runway. Then you pull this top cap off and throw it away. Then you unscrew this little cap down here near the base. Then you push this little switch, and from then on you make no loud noises, Brother. It is an acoustic trigger. A loud noise, like a jet going over low, closes the circuit, and that ignites the propellant and it comes out fast. Little vanes snap open. It's a heat-finder. Little heat-sensitive guidance sys

The Green Ripper tem. It will pick right up to a thousand meters a second, which is somewhere around two thousand miles an hour. It has a four-mile range and it'll hit the hottest thing it can find, which will be a jet en- gine, and it's got enough muscle to blow off a wing or a tail, whatever. They come six in a case, labeled kitchen equipment, and we've got ten cases. It's a low-risk operation. The best way is a telephone company truck. You always see them off on back roads, and you never think twice about it."

"Commercial airports?"

"We certainly couldn't get close enough to military ones even if we wanted to."

"Where are they made7"

"It doesn't say. The instructions come in six languages."

I hoped I did not look as shaken as I felt. If only one out of every six ignited and hit a target, it would be the worst airline disaster of all time. "Ladies and gentlemen, we are on our final approach to San Francisco International Airport. Please put out all cigarettes and make sure your seat belts are fastened and your tray tables are in an upright position. It has been our pleasure serving you, and we hope you will fly..." team.

He picked it up gently and, holding it so as not to smear his paint job, carried it off toward the warehouse. I went back into the mess hall. It was my turn on the food detail. I stared at the supplies and couldn't decide what to have. I felt queasy.

I jumped a foot in the air when somebody "lapped me on the behind. It was Stella, back from her morning wars, grinning, showing a lot of uneven teeth. And smelling faintly of cordite.

'Frey, you got bad nerves, Brother Tom."

'books that way."

'I should come on by tonight and relax you. But, come to think of it, well have to make it another time. I'm on the gate midnight to dawn. What's the matter with you? You act down. Is anything wrong?"

"No. Everything is just peachy. Help me figure out what to cook up."

"Get out of the way. Let me see what we've got. Boy, there isn't much. But there's two less for lunch, and Brother Persival and Brother Alvor will be back later on with fresh supplies."

"Who's down on the gate??'

"Brother Sammy, I think."

"Should somebody take something down to him?"

"He can eat after he's relieved."

'I don't even know who runs the duty roster."

"Brother Chuck? mostly. Unless Brother Persival wants something done different. Have you been studying your book?"

"The Loving Heart? It sure isn't easy reading."

"You can say that again. You know, there are parts I have to skip every time."

Vhat I was thinking, if I could read some of it

The Green Ripper into a tape recorder, one of those little ones I saw, I could learn it faster."

"Oh, I can get you one of those. We've got two in our trailer. And lots of empty tape. Want it right now?"

"Why not7"

She gave me a warm look and a loving smile and went trotting off, leaving her pack, weapon, and belt in the corner of the kitchen area. I moved close enough to it to see that the Uzi clip was full up. They get used to having you around. Good old McGraw. He's getting plenty of exercise, enough food. We've got his money and we're supposed to be hunting for his daughter. Keep an eye on him, of course, but nobody is exactly worried about him.

I had tried to give myself another advantage too. During the field exercises I had tried to keep going when it called for endurance, but I had dogged it when it was something calling for quick. I had blundered around when the order was for silent approach. When we ran the improvised obstacle course, I arranged to finish almost last every time. In unarmed combat, I let the men drop me with a certain amount of fuss and trouble. I was rounding off into top shape, putting on a nice edge. As I clumsied along, I studied each of them to see their flaws. Barry was muscle-bound from too much body building. Haris was very quick but without adequate physical strength. Sammy was too wildly energetic. He didn't plant himself for leverage, and he tried to move in too many directions at onch Ahman was quick and strong and crafty, once he had made up his mind, but he was prone to fatal hesitations. Chuck was the best of them, without a weakness except perhaps a tendency to exhibit more grace than was required, to turn his best profile toward an imaginary camera, to leap a little higher, spin more quickly than the exercise required.

Stella came back with a little cardboard box, silver-colored and battered, and repaired with tape. The Olympus Pearlcorder and accessories were in a jumble inside the box, along with extra tapes and batteries.

'everybody will have to use one when we get the assignments," she said. tow?',

66You have to memorize every word of your assignment, and you have to be able to start anywhere, in the middle, toward the end, anywhere. So what you do is read it onto the tape, and then before you go to sleep and when you wake up, you play it and say it right along with yourself, over and over and over. It has to be so much second nature that you don't have to think about it when you go out on an operation. They're very, you know, compiete. You will get off at the corner of Main and Central. You will wale quickly north on Main on the right-hand side of the street. When you get to the bus stop at the southeast corner of Main and

The Green Ripper

Pearl, you will wait there until precisely fourteen hundred hours. You will turn and enter the General National Bank Building, take the first available elevator, and ride up to the fifteenth floor. You will turn left when you exit the elevator, follow the corridor to the fire door at the end.' And so on. That was only part of a practice operation I did. There were two more pages of orders. By the time I started it, I never had to think of what to do next. I knew. I was like some kind of machine, you know?"

I took the recorder back to T-6 and left it on the bunk and came back and helped her with the meal. Since it was the last day of the year, Persival had canceled all afternoon exercises and given orders for solitary meditation and rest. I acquainted myself with my tape recorder. There was an attachment to screw onto the bottom of it which worked as a voice-actuating device. I tested the sensitivity. I put a tape in and read some of The Loving Heart.

"Just as white reflects all colors and black absorbs all colors, the Lord both reflects and absorbs all the thoughts and desires which pass through our mind. When you know that your thoughts are turning negative, that you are losing faith in your own faith, you must become one vith a trusted Brother or Sister who loves you, and through that person renew and restore each other to the positive glory of the Church."

I listened to it come back, with little clicks where it had turned off by itself and come back on again at the sound of my voice, sometimes eliminating the first syllable after the pause.

It amused me to think of what Meyer would say about this mishmash. Though perfectly willing to pursue the philosophical concept to the furthest thicket of his mind, he has no patience with imprecision of thought, looseness of expression.

I read the tattered Pearlcorder manual again and pondered where to place the device. Persival and Alvor were the ones I wanted to tap. Alvor had a little square cement house of his own. It resembled him. Persival lived in the most elegant accommoda- tion of an, a fat tan motor home with bulbous rounded corners and six soft but not flat tires. In the evenings he would confer with Chuck or Alvor or both of them in his motor home. It had obsolete Arizona plates and was not readily visible from the broad flat area of the stony plateau.

One side of one tape was good for thirty minutes. Planting the machine was no good if I had no way to retrieve it.

The quality of the light had changed. I opened my door. Snow was falling, big fat flakes, melting as they fell, coming down in ever greater quantity,

The Green Ripper dimming the sky. As I stood there I heard the van coming. It stopped near the warehouse, and I went out to see if I could help, shoving the recorder into my pocket. There were some small heavy wooden boxes in addition to the supplies they had gone after. Chuck appeared, and as he and Alvor carried the boxes into the warehouse, I was detailed to move the provisions to the kitchen. It took four trips, and when I went back to the van, Brother Persival was standing, grimacing with pain, beside one of the small boxes which had fallen into the snow.

"I shouldn't have tried to carry it," he said. '~Would you take it to my quarters, please, Brother Thomas? I'll be along in a few moments."

It was very heavy for the size of it and contained, according to the label, some sort of electronic equipment. The motor home was locked. I rested the box on the step. Just to the left of the door there was a metal grid held in place by simple plan tic thumbscrew devices, two of them. I guessed it was to vent heat from the back of the refrigerator. I took out the recorder, set the sensitivity, put it on Automatic Record, undid one thumbscrew, pulled the flimsy metal out a few inches, and shoved the recorder into the small space inside and closed the grid again. It had been an almost instinctive reaction. I did not know how or when I was going to retrieve the recorder. I did not know if it would do me any good. Maybe, if the refrigerator was run ning, I would merely get thirty minutes of compressor effects. If Stella wanted the recorder back, I would have to say I lost it in the snow or the creek, or somewhere.

Within moments I was wishing I had it back, but Brother Persival came along to open the door. He did not invite me in. He told me to reach in and set the box on the Boor. He thanked me, and I went away. I went to a spot where I could see who might be going in and out of the motor home. First Alvor and then Chuck. Then Alvor came out and went to his own place. Chuck stayed inside until it was time to start fixing the evening meal. Celebration. Among the supplies was a batch of barbecued chickens, needing only to be heated up. And there were several half-gallon jugs of Gallo Hearty Burgundy, and ice cream packed in dry ice. End of the year. Hooray for the New Year. Hooray for terrorism, for death and fire and confusion. We were all smiles and fun as we ate. Even Ahman was pleasant to me. Persival and Alvor ate at the big table with the rest of us. The snow was staying on the ground.

With no better plan, I managed a wine drunk. I sang. I kissed the ladies. I was a figure of fun. McGraw, the funny fisherman. Dads, we call him. I whacked Alvor on the back. It was very like whacking the side of his little cement house. And it got just as much reaction.

Suddenly I stopped and stood, weaving back and

The Green Ripper forth, a hand clapped across my mouth, eyes wide with consternation, cheeks bulging. I plunged to the door and went out into the snow, leaving them laughing.

I made sure I left erratic tracks, but the tracks took me right to the motor home. I had just fastened the thin metal grille back in place when Sammy yelled, "You! Hey! Get away from therel What are you doing?"

I wheeled around and stumbled toward him, arms wide. "Good al' Brother Sammy. Never knew I was gonna have a Chinese brother."

He tried to elude me, but I embraced him and began a horrible retching cough that panicked him. He struggled free and I fell to my hands and knees and said, "Gotta go home. Help me, old buddy. Can't find old T-Six. Somebody moved it on me."

He helped me up, and I staggered a zigzag course along the direction in which he was leading me. I mumbled thanks and crawled into my trailer. Five minutes later, when I looked out, there was no one in sight. I undressed and got into the bunk un- der the blankets. The tape had been used up. I rewound it. I used the ivory ear button to listen to it.

It was very indistinct. I experimented with the volume controls, trying to clear it. The voices sounded too much alike. It was Alvor, Persival, and Chuck, talking about people I didn't know. And they were too far from the recorder.

Alvor left the conversation. I could more readily distinguish between Chuck's and Persival's voices.

They both were muffled, but Persival spoke in slower cadence. " three more here... Ireland... woman thirty... late January..."

" about another vehicle?"

'later. Maybe at the same time."

Mumble "..."

~ tentative approval... liked the basic idea. Oil tankers too... longer delay... arrive tomorrow... description of McGraw... take a personal look... coming up from... go back with him... you in charge."

And that was all I could get out of the half hour. The rest was all fragmentary, blurred, distorted. I played those parts over and over, trying to get another word or two. Somebody was coming on New Year's Day to take a look at their Mr. McGraw. As a card-carrying pessimist, I could expect nothing good from that. With such a big, careful, patient, rich organization, they would have sent somebody to check out the expired Florida driver's license with my face thereon. Probably sent the license itself. Maybe their Mr. Toomey or Mr. Kline took a look at the license. I had been too tricky. Always keep things simple as possible.

It meant I would have to choose one of my sorry options sooner than I had expected. The most attractive one was to take off in the snowstorm while they thought me drunk. Get to a phone somehow.

The Green Ripper

Call the number memorized at the request of Max and Jake. Hope they would believe me. Hope they would move fast enough.

I dressed warm. Poncho on last. I moved to the door, and just as I got there, it opened and Stella came in out of the snow and ran right into me.

"Hey, where are you going?"

Ie? I'm going back to the party."

'~hat party's over." She grinned. "And now we've got our own private one. You know, there isn't supposed to be this much snow here this time of year, staying on the ground." She gave me a push. "Back to the sack, lover. I got taken off the gate detail, and Nena has some company, so I've got to stay. Here, let me help you get that off, Brother Tommy. Honey, are you too drunk to make it? We'll find out. Don't worry about it. I got lots of ways to help you. Sit down, sweetie. 111 get your shoes off. There. Don't you worry about a thing."

When I saw the first faint pallor of dawn at the window, I made my move. She was asleep on the inside, face to the wall. I had to believe she had been told to stay close to me until tomorrow's visitor could check me out. I got up as quietly as I could and began dressing. Sudderdy she rolled over and sat up and said, "Hey? Where you going?"

I held my finger to my lips and shushed her.

Vhat's going on?" she whispered.

I leaned close as if to whisper in her ear. When she lifted her chin, I popped her on the corner of the jaw with a right that traveled about six inches. In my tension and apprehension, I had hit her harder than was necessary. It bounced her head off the wall behind her and she sprawled face down into the pillow, motionless. I ripped her heavy twill shirt into Strips, tied her up securely, poked a wad of shirt material into her mouth, and used the last strip to hold it there, with the knot at the back of her neck.

It was a very still morning, the first day without wind since I had arrived. Welcome to the New Year. The temperature was up, the snow beginning to melt. It made for bad footing. I knew I couldn't risk going too fast. Too many chop blocks in the old days had stretched the knee tendons almost to the point of surgery. I could land on something under the snow that would shift or turn, and from then on I could be caught by a reasonably spry turtle.

My plan was to get down the road as fast as Icould, cut off at the last bend, and come up behind the lean-to. I was fifteen yards from the beginning of the road when there was a yell behind me. I ned and saw Barry back near the kitchen building, alone and unarmed. So I began to move a lot faster, hoping for the best. I had made a slippery hundred yards down the hill when I heard three spaced shots behind me and a long screeching blast

The Green Ripper on Chuck's whistle. I knew that would alert whoever was at the gate, so that plan was shot.

I turned off the road at an angle to the right, hoping to make a wide half circle around the gate and come back onto the public road. I soon realized I wasn't going to give them much trouble. It was very rough country. I couldn't try to brush away my tracks. The snow was too soggy. I couldn't go as fast as they would. They had good knees. I couldn't wait for the hymn snow to melt. The only thing I could possibly try would be to make a circle, intercept my own trail, and ambush them. With snowballs, perhaps. And they would realize that this was my only option and would be careful to take the elementary precaution of spacing themselves a hundred feet apart and searching the snow on either side for tracks.

While thinking, I was making as good time as I dared. And I studied the terrain, trying to evolve some kind of plan. There would be at least two, and they would probably be Barry and Chuck, and they would have those little Uzis. I slid down a steep bank into a tumbling brook and scrambled up the rocky ten-foot slope on the other side, picking up a rock a little bigger than a baseball and tucking it into the slit pocket of the poncho, where it proceeded to chunk me on the hip every third step. But it was better than a snowball.

I came to a second, smaller creek. It was shadow enough, so I went downstream, stumbling on the stones, splashing water up to my knees. It dipped downhill abruptly, spilling over the rocks in a mini- waterfall. I had to sit down to negotiate the drop. Around two curves I came upon a place where the racing water had gouged a chunk out of the bank and toppled a big pine across the brook. It had happened many months ago. The pine had wedged itself against two large living trees on the other bank and rested at about a 20-degree angle, crossing the brook fifteen feet above my head.

I stopped and studied it a few moments, then hurried on down the creek and around two more bends, climbing out on the right-hand bank, making no attempt to disguise my exit across the fresh snow. In fact, I purposely went down to my knees and left them a clear handprint to give them confidence. I made a circle back upstream, and when I was away from the rushing water, I stopped and lis- tened. I could hear distant shouts. Then I heard the van and assumed it was going down past the gate, to take up a position on the public road to cut me off if I went that way.

As I neared the fallen tree, I tried to conceal my footsteps as much as possible. I stepped close to the base of trees. I took long slow stretching strides. I crept out along the fat trunk of the fallen tree on my hands and knees, trying to dislodge as little of the snow as possible. The thick dead limbs started at mid-creek, sticking out at right angles from the trunk. I was able to settle myself against two of

-The Green Ripper them, my chest resting on one, my thighs on another, out of sight behind the trunk from anybody coming downstream. By lifting my head I could look upstream. I dislodged a little snow on the trunk so I would not have to lift my head any far-~ ther than necessary.

I changed position enough to find a limb I could hook my anldes over. It helped. The position was uncomfortable. I could expect that they, if there were two of them, would both come downstream. It was my logical escape direction. I hoped they would be well spread out. I hoped the one in the lead would not stop and turn around, once past the tree, look back for his friend, and glance upward.

It seemed certain they would come down the creek itself. The terrain was so difficult they would be endlessly slow if they tried to walk beside it, each taking a bank and staying opposite each other. I guessed the temperature had moved up into the high 40s. The woods dripped. Clots of heavy snow fell off the pine boughs. I rehearsed my drop, thinking out each move. There was no time to practice.

It was taking longer than I expected. Suddenly I heard the heavy splashing sound of somebody walking swiftly down the creek. He passed under me. Brother Chuck. He moved well, knees slightly bent, keeping his balance, holding the Uzi in his right hand by the trigger assembly, swinging it to point at one bank and then the other as he swiveled his gaze back and forth. I did not breathe until he was out of sight. I waited for the next one. I hoped there was a next one. Then I heard the screech of Chuck's whistle. Two long blasts, carrying well in the morning stillness, piercing the sounds of the brook, the sounds of dripping from the trees.

So either he would be off and running along my trail, or he would wait there to be sure his number two didn't miss it. I wished I had made it more difficult to see.

Along came the splashing, more rapid than before. I couldn't risk a look. I jacked my feet up onto the limb on which my thighs had rested. I braced myself with my left hand against the limb which had been under my chest. I held my comforting rock in my right hand. When I caught the first glimpse of Chuck's number two emerging from under my tree, I slid my feet off the limb and dropped. I had turned slightly to my right, hoping to land with my feet on the back of his shoulders and pitch him forward into the water. I landed behind him and slammed the rock squarely on top of his skull. I went down, floundering to get up, expecting him to be ready to CUt me in half. When I came up gasping, he was face down in fifteen inches of black water, the current slowly turning his feet downstream. I saw the glint of metal and picked the weapon out of the icy water, wondering if it would fire. My right knee would barely support my weight. I shifted the weapon to my left hand, grabbed Barry by the tough clothing at the nape

The Green Ripper of his neck, and dragged him out of the brook and up the bank to the left.

I had no idea how fast Chuck would be in getting to my tree. I knew he would be thinking as he ran, and as soon as he saw where my trail was gm ing, he would think ambush. When I climbed up on the high bank, he wasn't in sight. Not yet. I looked at Barry. He had an ugly jellied depression half the size of my rock in the crown of his head. But I had no time for Barry. I saw movement. Chuck was coming fast through the trees. Too fast for me to risk jumping up and trying to hobble to shelter. Barry was at the top of the bank, on his back. I sat him up and lay prone behind him. I held him in position with the fabric between his shoulder blades bunched in my left hand. I checked the Uzi. It seemed to be on full automatic. I shoved it forward, under Barry right arm, and found I could line up the sights.

Chuck disappeared behind the uplifted root structure of the big tree, then came back into view, very tense, crouched, swinging the muzzle from side to side. He looked over and saw his partner sitting on the bank, head on his chest, soaking wet, and I knew his first impulse would be concern, but his second reaction would be to jump back into the cover he had just left. He was quicker than I expected. I caught him in mid-jump and apparently hit him quite high as he began a back flip before disappearing. I scuttled to my rear and hid behind a tree. When I let go of Barry, the body pitched forward and slid down to the edge of the creek.

I counted up to a reasonable number twice, and then once more for good measure. I circled, went back and crossed the creek above the little waterfall, came around, and finally saw Chuck on his face in the melting snow, his weapon a yard away from his right hand, resting against a rotting stump, as naturally as if he had placed it there.

I moved close enough to have seen him breathing, had he been. I moved in and rolled him over. One high on the right shoulder, two high on the right chest. Probably not instantaneous. He had probably faded away while I was counting.

"The iceman," I said aloud, and the sound of my voice starded me. No need to lose your wits, McGee. No need to talk to yourself in the forest deep. It was a pleasure to be McGee again. McGraw had been a tiresome fellow. Dogged and unresponsive.

I searched them both. I switched weapons. I kept Barry's small pack, Chuck's ammo belt, grenades, intricate wristwatch, whistle cord and whistle, all the clips, both sets of keys, and their combined treasury of forty-two dollars. Though the dead seem to shrink in size, it is hard to get into their pockets. They seem to offer a stolid resistance to personal invasion.

I kept a close watch upstream while robbing my brothers. My knee was coming back. I had

The Green Ripper progressed from a hobble to a "imp, and from experience I could tell that if I kept moving, it would work itself out the rest of the way.

There was an assumption to be made. Somebody had probably been near enough to the area to hear the distinctive net drumming of the Uzi in a wasteful burst of about ten. It would be reasonable for them to suppose that Brother Chuck and Brother Barry had come upon Brother Thomas and cut him down in the snow. Since they had been trained in exactly this sort of thing, pursuit and murder, it was not reasonable to suppose the murderee had turned the tables. And I had given them cause to feel a certain professional contempt for the abilities of Brother Thomas. So now they would be waiting for Brother Chuck and Brother Barry to come back out to the road and report. Persival, Alvor, Ahman, Haris, Sammy, Nena, and if they had found her and untied her~tella

Assume somebody on the gate and one person way down the road in the van or off in the van to pick somebody up. Four left on top of the hill. Five counting Stella. So go in the least likely direction. Back to camp. The hard way. Up the slopes, well away from the road.

By now there was such a confusion of tracks, I doubted they could be easily read. Also, in places where the snowfall on the ground had been light because of the trees, it was melted enough to show the brown carpet of needles.

After a time I came to familiar terrain where we had been on the exercises, on the training missions. I stopped and listened for a long time and heard nothing. Then I heard five spaced shots well below and behind me, very probably from where I had left the bodies. Five was Brother Chuck's emergency signal on his whistle, taken, no doubt, from the marine emergency signal, five quick ones on the ship's horn.

Probably two down there, one at the gate, one in the van, three on top of the hill, counting Stella. One with, as Persival himself had pointed out, very bad wheels. Alvor, Persival, and perhaps Stella.

All of them were convinced of the absolute correctness of their training, their dedication, their mission. A true zealot can be a fearsome engine of destruction. I worked my way up the slope. The small shattered trees were off to my left. I stretched out and inched forward until I could see all the way down the length of the small plateau. It was seven or eight hundred feet long, three or four hundred wide, with the structures grouped at the far end.

240

14 r

As I watched, I heard a motor. It was the van, coming up the hill, approaching rapidly. The road came out onto the plateau a hundred feet to my right. It bounced up over the final ridge so quickly I could not tell if there was one person in it or two.

It rolled to a stop near Persival's motor home and, as Sammy or Ahman got out of it I couldn't tell which one it was at that distance, close to six hundred feet Persival and Alvor came out of the motor home. They stood and talked. I could guess that it was excited talk. The newcomer was waving his arms and pointing back the way he had come.

I had the general idea of using the keys to get into the big warehouse building and then making as much all-around hell as I could with whatever I might find there. But my chances of doing that would be improved if I could keep the locals indoors.

There didn't seem to be too much danger in loosing a single shot in their direction. I set my little machine to Single Fire, to the logo by the small knob. I did not know how much accuracy I could expect. But it did seem a useful idea to make a serious attempt to wing one of them. Alvor struck me as being the most ominous of the three. I aimed as carefully as I could at a spot six inches over his head and squeezed the trigger. The one who was Ahman or Sammy, three feet to Alvor's right, bent over abruptly and fell to the ground. The other two ducked into the motor home. The figure on the ground struggled to get up, then hitched along like a broken bug until he was out of sight around Brother Persival's dwelling. Splendid shooting! Aim at one, hit another. The slug flew three feet low and three feet to the left. I had had no real expectation of knocking anybody down at that range. The flat little smacking sound of the shot had seemed inadequate and potentially ineffective.

How now? I didn't want to lose my luck. It goes like that, like a giant crap table. One day in a firelight, you never see anybody. You keep falling down, jamming the weapon, drawing fire, and if you do see people, you're convinced you couldn't hit within fifteen feet of them. And a week later,

The Green Ripper fifty miles away, everything works. The grenade takes a home-team bounce, you spin and shoot from the hip and luck out. You get back and check yourself over and find a hole in your sleeve but none in your arm, and realize you never felt the tug or heard the whispery crack.

We used to call them John the Wayne days. It does not pay to get overconfident, but you have to ride your luck while you have it. Because it can turn on you.

It had all been a long time ago. The scene had a deja vu quality. I had been here before in another lifetime, and had killed people I hardly knew.

There was another oncoming sound, a roar, and an airplane came in and flew low and slow, checking the plateau. I eased back down the slope. Even though the paint job was yellow and white instead of the more familiar red and white of Bob Vincent's Cessna at Lauderdale, I knew the model. It was an old utility 206, the Super Skywagon, a durable workhorse with a single Continental 10-520A, fixed tricycle gear with fat tires, able to take six people a thousand miles on eighty-four gallons of fuel, if you babied it along at ten thousand feet at a hundred and thirty miles per hour. I saw two heads through the windshield. I could read off the number on the rudder. N8555F. I could remember Bob bragging about being able to get in and out of a fivehundred-foot strip with a light load.

With no perceptible breeze to worry about, the pilot went around again and came in. The wheels touched, and he went bounding and braking, kicking up slush, bouncing on the rocky ground. He came to a stop down near the buildings, and I saw Persival and Alvor on the other side of the plane, hurrying toward it. Alvor had his arm around Persival's waist, apparently supporting most of the frail man's weight as he rushed him to the plane. The prop was still turning. I thought they both got in, but could not be sure. There was a pause, probably for shouted explanations, then the plane swiveled around fast and began accelerating down the field for takeoff. Alvor watched it go, then scuttled back to shelter.

I jumped up and ran out. I had both pack straps over my left shoulder, so I could reach into the pack as it dangled under my arm. I reached in for one of those grenades, pulled the pin, and hurled it, trying to lead the airplane, trying to get the grenade out in front of it. I think the pilot saw it and knew what it was. He swerved and lost a little momentum, then picked it up again. The plane bounced one last time and lifted off the rocky stretch.

If I had to guess what happened, I would say that the pilot decided he had lost just enough speed and lift so that he wasn't going to clear the tops of the pines which grew on the downslope beyond the far end of the plateau. The grenade made a harmless cramping sound and a small cloud of dingy smoke far behind the plane. Perhaps it made

The Green Ripper the pilot nervous, and he started his turn too soon. He wanted to turn left, toward an opening in the trees. Maybe a gust of wind came along just then. The wing tip touched the ground, and that changed the flight attitude of the aircraft. The tail came up a little. He yanked the wing back up, but the plane went down and almost touched wheels again before he tried to lift it over the pines. At the last minute he tried to slip it through but, in slow motion, he sheared the right wing, thick strut, and right wheel off the machine, and it went plunging through the trees, turning, disappearing, then making a pro- longed thudding, grinding sound far down the slope. I waited for the sound of gasoline igniting, but it didn't come. If he had the presence of mind, he would have had time to cut the switch.

Alvor had run out of the motor home. I dropped and rolled over and over and over, hugging my weapon in my arms, over the edge of the plateau and down the slope, hearing the fading banshee scream of a ricochet as I came to a stop.

I did some scuttling of my own, moving to my right toward the road. I heard a shouted order, unexpectedly close. I moved beyond a thick tree and stood up. Ahman, Haris, and Alvor were runDing toward the spot where I had rolled down the slope. They were spread out, about twenty feet separating them, but they were converging. Alvor was making excellent time. They all had weapons at the ready. I guessed they had come up the road just in time to see Alvorfire at me. I clicked my riffle piece of machinery to full automatic fire. There was enough snow left on the slope so they could track me. I didn't like the idea of lighting out at a dead run for the buildings, hoping to make it. And I had a very brief moment to do some shooting without being shot at. I put as little of me as pos sible outside the protection of my tree and sprayed them, as with a garden hose, Ahman, the nearest, went down at once, falling hard, losing his weapon. Haris, beyond him, wavered, staggered, and turned, firing in short bursts in my general direction, firing toward the sound before he spotted me. I got behind my tree, snapped a new clip into the weapon, leaned out again, and found Hans shockingly close, lurching like a drunk but firing as he came. A very ballsy performance for a thin man with at least one slug in him. My burst took him squarely in the chest, hammering him back up the few feet of slope and onto the flat, where he fell backward, dead be" fore he could comprehend that finality. A far more authoritative projectile chucked into my tree, and I could imagine that Alvor had one of the assault rifles. I looked around the other side of my tree, a very quick look indeed, but time enough to see A1 vor running like a fullback toward the buildings, cutting, feinting, fooling the tacklers. I was moving out to take a chance at him with a long high burst when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye and fired at it immediately, with no pause for conscions thought. Ahman had retrieved his weapon and had been bringing it to bear on me, with every good chance of sending me to join Haris. The burst took him in the higher shoulder, and out of momentary panic I kept the weapon on him, rolling him over and over, a ragged bundle spraying blood and tissue.

A lot of it was luck. A lot of it was having a John Wayne day. But some of it was that old training which eliminates the last hesitation. Death comes while you are struggling with your application or lack of application of the Judeo-Christian ethic. While you work out the equation which says, If I don't kill him, he will kill me, so even if I have been taught not to kill, this is an exception while you are working that out, he is blowing chunks of bone out of your skull. The quick and the dead is an: ancient allusion. They were quick and I was quick and lucky. There was some cunning involved, of course. Being able to see how I might use that tree over the water. Coming back here instead of heading off at a full run. Remembering to scuttle far away from the place where I had rolled out of sight off the plateau. Using Barry as a shield, to shock Chuck momentarily into inaction. So they were gone. Chuck and Barry. The almost-forgotten Nicky. And Persival and the two who had arrived in the plane probably all dead, from the sound of the impact. Now Haris and Ahman too, leaving only Alvor and the two women. A veritable mas

247

John MacDonald sacre. A bloodbath. Butchery. I kept the horror bottled away. There would be time to examine that later on. Right now there was the high-riding pleasure of doing some difficult thing far better than you expected to be able to do it. I had been as slow and clumsy as I dared during the exercises. How many of them had died with a feeling of disbelief, frur,tration, anger? With the ghastly toothy grin of tlie skull-head of death looking over my shoulder, I was intensely alive. I was alive in every thready little nerve fiber, every capillary. I was tuned to quickness, the world all sharp edges around me, my ears hearing every small sound in the world.

Push the luck. Keep pushing. But the women? I somehow did not think I could open fire from ambush on them, as I had on the others. Had I been as hesitant about the others, I would now be as dead as they were.

I moved along to the head of the road, discarding the nearly empty clip, mounting another. I wanted to be in better position to kin the Dodge van if Alvor should decide to hop in and make a run for the gate. I could guess that he was reasonably certain there was more than one of me. He'd heard the report to Persival about the kiting of Clinck and Barry. And he knew the airplane had gone down. Ahman and Haris lay on the thin wet skin of the last of the snow. Rivulets of water ran off the plateau.

The Green Ripper

I moved across the head of the road and took shelter on the other side. I tried to sort out the people, guess at their assignments. If Ahman and Haris had gone looking for Chuck and Barry, then Sammy was the one I had knocked down with the single slug meant for Alvor. And if they had left somebody on the gate, it would have to be Nena. It was possible Stella was still tied up, that nobody had looked for her in T-6. It was possible that Sammy was waiting for me, armed. Make it four to one, two of them women. But no special advantage to me there they were as quick and well-trained and toughened as the men had been.

I heard a sudden motion, a slipping sound, then a heavy thud and a grunt, and then a woman said, venomously, "Sonnabitchl" I moved farther back. Sister Nena I recognized her voic~-had been coming up the road and had slipped and fallen. My luck was holding. Water was running down the road through slush and mud. She was watching her footing, but she held the weapon at the ready as she rounded the final bend. I could have shot her then. I held on her and thought of the savage slaughter of the innocent she was quite willing to undertake. I thought of the connection between her and the silvery little sphere which had been used to slay my woman.

I dug a grenade out of the pack. I did not pull the pin. I lobbed it with a slow sidearm so that it would arch over her head and fall on the roadside beyond her. The moment it was in the air, I was on my feet, weapon on the ground. The grenade hit and she spun toward the sound, and I charged her. She heard me coming, but she was caught for a frozen moment in a dilemma of choice. Run from the grenade or turn and cut me down. She ran several steps down the road, tumbled and rolled in expert fashion, and ended up in the prone firing position, getting off one wild shot before I kicked the Uzi out of her hands to turn in the air and land in the shallow wet ditch. I grabbed her, and she came up popping me under the chin with her head so hard the world was full of stars and lights. I turned and took a hard kick on the thigh that could have disabled me. Then she tripped me, somehow, and got loose and went scrambling away, running in a strange fashion on her hands and her feet with her rump high in the air. She had registered that the ring was still affixed to the grenade, and she went after it instead of the Uzi. I tried too fast a start and slipped and went down again. She snatched up the grenade, standing and turning as she did so, yanking the pin, releasing the handle. I saw her lips moving as she counted. Her face was screwed up by the intensity of thought, like a child with a puzzle.

I couldn't get to her. She was moving backward quite rapidly, up the hill. She held her arm back, ready to throw. Whichever way I went, she would lead me, and she was nearing her count. I feinted

The Green Ripper one way to draw the throw and ran the other way. Just as she tried to throw it underhand, both feet went out from under her and she sat down hard in the slush. She had thrown it and I couldn't see it anywhere. She had a dazed look. I saw it suddenly, coming down. The fall had made her throw it straight up in the air. It hit behind her and bounced off stone, almost as high as her head, before it went off. I weaved my way over to the other ditch, crossed it, and held onto a small tree. It was a good time for Alvor to have happened along, had he only known it. I found my weapon and picked it up, checked it out. I wondered if I was going to be sick. I knew I was not going to look at what was left of Sister Nena. Not now.

How much luck remained to me? I had needed it more with Nena than with any of the others. Her timing had been perfect. A very accurate count. She was planning on an air burst right in my face.

I had the feeling that this had been a warning to me. This is the way They had used up the very last of my luck. All at once. Good-bye, John Wayne. I went around the side of the plateau, around the end, through very difficult country, staying well below the level of the plateau, moving as quietly as I could. Chuck's complicated wristwatch said it was ten o'clock. I had thought it was at least three in the afternoon. I had lived through more bad hours than the watch would admit. Cover and concealment. The day was overcast, and the misty rain be gan. I had muddied my face. I worked my way up the slope behind the warehouse, walking my forearms along, digging with the toes, watching everything, listening to the dripping eaves, the rain, the silence. It seemed strange to me that I had never heard any birds up here. There should be birds.

Now what would I do if I were old Alvor Brother Alvor with the broad meaty shoulders, the square gray face? Why, I would set up in a good place. I would set up on a high place. I would, by God, set up on a roof, not necessarily the highest roof around, but one where I could lie doggo, and then pop up suddenly and blow the fisherman to fishbait bits. I looked around very carefully. I backed down the slope and came up in a new place and looked around some more.

Finally I had an idea where I might find him. Persival's motor home had one of those ladders that go up to a depression on top that forms a luggage receptacle, with a little chrome fence around it for the tie-downs. It was a handy place for Alvor. He could have climbed the ladder out of sight of the road area. Yes, it would be a very wise choice. But how to check it out and remain alive? I moved again, back down the slope and up again to where I could come out behind one of the little cementblock structures, out of his sight if he were on top of the motor home. I was beginning to get very ragged in the nerve department. I was certain my

The Green Ripper luck was gone, and so it took just about all I had to stand up and move in close to the wall of the little building. I leaned against it, feeling sweat run out of an armpit and tickle my ribs as it ran down. My hands were shaky. Sammy was waiting in one direc lion to blow me apart' Stella in another,~and Alvor on the high ground. find of the saga Twilight of the great John Wayne day.

I did not want to leave the shelter of my nice solid little building. It can get to be like when you were a kid, standing on a high place. Wait too long and you can't jump.

Check the weapon. Breathe deeply. Where had all that zest gone? Who stole the gusto? It went when somebody blew the head off Sister Nena.

One way to go at it I put an eye around the corner of the building. The motor home was right there, about forty feet away. A hide of very thin alloy with an enamel coating. If he was elsewhere, I would be taking the risk of letting him know I was close. But that was acceptable.

I leaned against the building, aimed, let it go on full automatic, cartridge cases dancing away, slugs smacking into the metal, punching holes, making creases in the roundness, making a lot of metallic banging, screech of ricochets, quackety roar of the very rapid cycle of fire. There was an answering roar and something leaped off the roof, out of the depression, and down on the other side of the incongrnous vehicle. Have fun on the road. Drive me to Yellowstone. Plug in the water, the electric, and the phone, and adjust the TV aerial.

I had to make my run. But I had a spot right in the middle of my back, right where Sammy or Stella was going to drive it home. I had used the ne~ct-to-the-last clip to drive Alvor off the roof, and I put in the last clip when I went hunting him. The silence after all that great rackety clatter was astonishing. I braced my back against the motor home, snapping my head from side to side, wondering if he were already runningout across the plateau.

I eased myself down and looked under the vehicle. No feet. I stood up and felt a faint movement of the whole vehicle, not unlike the slight movement of a heavy boat when somebody steps aboard. Okay, so he had eased the door open and gone in. It moved again. So he was creeping around in there. And might have a shot out of the right window at a steep enough angle to knock off a piece of my head or shoulder. I dropped again and eased under Brother Persival's house.~It was a close fit, but I pulled myself slowly, on my back, over to the other side. Now he was in there, peering out the windows, trying to spot me. And I had no idea what in hell I was going to do. All I knew was that I was in a spot where he couldn't see me.

I felt more movement, heard a creak. And then, twenty inches from my head, a muddy shoe came down, stealthily. And the second one as he stepped out of the vehicle. I was dragging the Uzi along by

The Green Ripper the muzzle, still hot from the long burst, and I knew I had not the time nor the room to pull it to position, aim, and fire it. He stood there, and I reached out and snatched his ankles and pulled them out from under him and tried to snake myself out from under that thing in the same motion. I was halfway out when he kicked me loose. He tHedto bring the barrel of his rifle down to bear on me, but I got inside the arc of the muzzle and swarmed onto him, hitting him once in the face. He bucked me off and rolled over and over, but I had hold of the rifle and tore it away from him. I tried to turn it on him, but he came inside the arc just as I had done and butted me up against the side of the vehicle. He was a very powerful man, and a very quick man. I saw the gleam of metal, dropped the rifle, and went for his wrist. We rolled over and over, and I could see that from somewhere he had come up with a stubby, broad-bladed, evil-looking knife. I hate a knife. Then I was on my back and his weight was on me, and with all his strength he was slowly forcing the blade down, bending my arms in the process. I got my feet under me and bucked him off over my head. I snatched his ride by the barrel and swung the stock at him as he was rolling to his feet. It took him squarely in his thick throat

His eyes bulged. His face began to change color. He was kneeling, both hands at his throat, tearing the shirt collar away. I could see his chest heaving with the effort to get air through the smashed pas sageway. His face darkened and his wide eyes saw nothing any more. He sat back on his haunches, then rolled onto his side in the mud, still pulling at his shirt. There was one long rippling, quivering, muscle-jerking spasm, and then he was still. I retrieved the Uzi from under the motor home and stood, listening and listening.

Not luck this time. The strength and the speed of utter, demoralized panic. The extra adrenaline that came from the horror, the terror, of knives.

I went looking, very cautiously, for Sammy. I found him inside the motor home. He sat on the floor, leaning against a pillow. His eyes were halfopen. On impulse I closed them with my thumb. The belly and groin and thighs of his coveralls were dark and heavy with blood, the color turning from dark red to chocolate. Evidently one of my slugs had clipped a major artery.

I went to T-6. Somebody had taken the gag out of Stella's mouth and freed her hands and ankles. She was on her back, the edge of the blanket across her waist. She breathed quickly and shallowly. The breathing stopped after every half-dozen or so breaths, and she would be still for perhaps thirty seconds before taking a deep gasping throat-rattling inhalation. I touched the pulse in her throat. It was light and fast. Id the dingy light I bent closely and eased her eyelids up. The black pupil of the left one was twice the size of the one of the right eye. I

The Green Ripper knew the signs. Sister Stella was dying. It is called cerebral hemorrhage.

I looked down at her, and saw her die. Poor sallow little dishwater blonde, a hustler recruited for more serious duty. She had pleasured Brother Thomas. McGee had never touched her. McGee could not remember ever touching her... in that direction lies a tantalizingly attractive kind of madness. To become two people means that one need take no responsibility for the other. The pleasant release of guilt or tension can widen the gap between the two.

I covered her to the chin and went out into the blowing mist. There had been ten of them, and two more in the incoming aircraft, and now there were none. I was glad the wind had started again. It was far better than the silence. I shed the belt. I had lost the pack under the motor home. I slung the Uzi over my shoulder. It was comfortable to carry. I went looking for the airplane.

It had gone much farther down the slope than I had supposed. The engine and pieces of the cowling were jammed into a rocky bank. The tail section was up in a tree. The fuselage was in two large parts and dozens of ragged pieces. Seats and bits of plastic and wiring were scattered over a broad area There was a stink of fuel.

One of them had apparently gone into the rocky bank, as had the engine. He lay bent in wrong directions, missing an arm, and it was impossible to discover what he had looked like. There was a faded tattoo of a blue-and-red eagle on his right wrist, almost obscured by curly blond hair. The eagle held a little scroll in its claws. It said "Charlene."

Another was on his face, and he was draped over a boulder, spread-eagled, hip pockets high. He looked almost normal until I noticed how totally flat his chest was. From back to front he seemed to be about four inches thick. He had huge pale hands. I wanted to see his face, but I didn't care to roll him off his boulder. I sat on my heels, put a hand under his cold chin, and lifted. He had no visible eyelashes or eyebrows. His fine blond hair was cropped short. One small gray eye was open, the other almost dosed. A conspiratorial wink. A little mouth, a delicate little nose, and a face pitted and scarred by the acne of his youth.

"And how are you, Brother Titus?" I asked him.

Middling, he seemed to say. Just middling.

"Help!" I dropped Brother Titus's head and scrambled back, tripped, and sat down. "Help met"

I moved over to the larger part of the wrecked fuselage. Brother Persival lay on his back, on what had been the side wall and windows. The gas stink was stronger.

I made certain his hands were empty before I knelt. He frowned up at me. 'McGraw? McGraw, don't touch me. I think my spine is smashed. I can't move my arms and legs."

The Green Ripper

"Makes quite a problem."

"Get some of the others and rig a litter. If you roll me carefully, you can slide me out of here."

"There aren't any others."

He closed his eyes, then opened them again. "Brother Haris has had some medical training."

"There aren't any others."

"They... they ran?" Incredulity.

"They're dead."

After long thoughtful moments he moistened his lips and said, "Then you're a bird dog. You brought a team in."

'Jo. Em alone."

'Y don't understand. You killed them all? How, for God's sake? All those brave young people. Some of our very best. So many thousands of hours and dollars in training them."

'Y had a lot of luck. And of course I had some practical experience in their line of work. And motivation. Let's not forget motivation, Brother."

"Who are you?"

"I'm Brother Thomas, the commercial fisherman."

'what had become evident. It was checked out. I got word about that yesterday. Who are you?"

"Just your average idle Florida beach bum. Name of McGee. Travis McGee. Salvage consultant." I grinned idiotically at him and stuck my hand out. But of course he couldn't take it. He had closed his eyes. I waited a long time before I touched him on the cheek. "Brother Persival?"

He looked at me. Impatience. "Yes, yes. What is it?"

"Your group killed my woman, in Florida. They went out of their way to give her a death that looked like illness."

"Why would we do that?"

"She had been here a long time ago, looking for her husband's kid sister, and she had seen Titus. Then she saw him again in Fort Lauderdale, negotiating to buy land for some Belgians, and recognized him. They shot a little sphere into the back of her neck and she died."

The look of puzzlement faded. His eyes closed again as he talked. "I don't know about it, of course. But I can see why it could have happened. There are strict rules about security. The friends who are helping us are ruthless about eliminating any link between the religious mission and the political mission. It is perfect cover. I knew we had access to that... particular method, but I didn't know it had been used. It was supposed to be undetectable. Odd. Odd. They help the same sort of groups... everywhere." He opened his eyes and said, "You came here because of her? Just because of her?"

"Just because of her."

"Strange. To undo so very much. So easily."

The next time I touched him, he didn't respond.

The Green Ripper

His sleep looked comfortable enough, in the circumstances.

"Just because of her," I told him again. But he was beyond all movement, all reply, all under- standing.

15 - I worked hard all the rest of that first day of the New Year. I found a bale of coarse blankets in the warehouse. I found some nylon rope and a sharp knife.

The idea, after I went down and made sure the gate was closed and locked, was to recover the farthest bodies first. Chuck and Barry. I took the van down to where I had left the road. It took me longer to find them than I had expected. All the snow was long gone. Spread the blanket. Roll body onto blanket. Tie twice around. Grab corner of blanket near the head and drag back to van. Lift in. Go get the other one. Lift in. Drive up sloppy road to ware- house. Unlock, lift bodies out, drag them inside one

The Green Ripper at a time. Drag them to place beyond narrow aisle where it widened out again. Side by side near far wall. Neat.

Next, Brother Titus, Brother Persival,and the faceless nameless one-armed third man. Very difflcult pulling them up the steep slope. Three in a row. Went and got van. Two into the back, one into the side door. Unlock warehouse, unload, drag them through, one at a time. Five in a row. Neat. But no arml Went back and looked. Looked everywhere. Finally realized that for some time as I was searching, I had been making a small strange whimpering sound. I put my hand over my mouth and stopped it.

Two out there in the flat. Ahman and Haris. Dragged them one at a time all the way. Easier than lifting, loading, unloading. Seven in a row. But one arm missing. Not as neat as I wanted it to be.

Nena next. Not neat at all. Could not stand the thought of poking about, looking for missing bits. Then Stella. Nine. Easy to drag. Alvor was difficult and bulky to drag. Messy getting Sammy onto the blanket, but okay after that. Eleven of them. Why not twelve? I stood there and counted them, pointing at each one, saying the name. Eleven!

I had missed somebody. Somebody was out there. I counted them over and over, and I was beginning to make that noise again. And then I remembered the twelfth. Nicky. Executed by me. Buried by his comrades.

Not much of the fading daylight came in. I sat on a crate purporting to contain electronic equipment. Eleven silent ones. I felt a strange affection for them. They were so docile. This was my own tiny little Jonestown. We had shared together the final climactic emotional experience. Did dark shadows move within the fading electrical charges of the emptied minds? Did the final instant record on continuous replay, over and over, each playing dimmer?

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."

Iy luck was running, and I let it run."

"They were supposed to be their best, huh? Educated abroad. Honed fine. Dunog the debriefing, you'll have to go into infinite detail about the training, what you saw of it."

"Everytlung I can remember."

"They'll want to go into hypnotic drugs to make sure they pull everything out."

'Tm in no position to object."

He stopped walking and turned to face me. "And when it is over and they turn you loose, all the in- formation stops, then and there. You never get any more from us, and nobody ever gets any of what you have from you."

'precept Meyer." Nobodyl"

Except Meyer."

41 am serious, dammit!"

"Me tow So you better not turn me loose. There is no way on earth that I can keep from telling him every damn detail of every damn day I spent here. Can't you remember the clearance he used to have? You checked it out. Remember?"

"Oh, hell, yes. Okay. Meyer. And only Meyer."

Two of them came out and spoke to Max in low

The Green Ripper voices. He came over to me and said, "Take your last look around, And hope they never find out who did their people in."

'A think they know."

'Of I was sure they know, I would set up a whole new identity for you, from plastic surgery to colored contact lenses."

'A wouldn't accept it anyway."

"You don't care if they come after you?"

'frankly, not a hell of a lot, Max. Not a hell of a lot."

In a little while we headed down out of the hills. Jake told me that when everything had been taken out, they were going to truck a couple of bulldozers up there and knock everything flat and push it off the edge. I said that would be nice. They said we would stay overnight in San Francisco, so I could rest up a little, and fly out in the morning. I said that would be nice. They said that maybe the money problem could be resolved in my favor. Like a kind of unofficial reward. Like, maybe, a bounty. I said that would be nice. So they stopped talking to me. I looked out the car window at the tall evergreens and wondered why all the birds had left this part of the world. Jake turned the wipers on, smearing the small sad rain. I think they were glad to stop trying to relate to me. They felt uneasy about me, about being close to me in a small car. I think they felt not exactly certain of what I might do next. And I knew they would not have felt better about it if I had told them I didn't have the faint- est notion, either, of what I might do next, today, tomorrow, or ever.

Epilogue

We had found a little cove around behind the Berry Islands, and with the small chop slapping us in the transom, I had bumped twice getting over the bar into the still water. But that was at low tide, and the charts for that day in late June said it was unusually low, so no sweat about getting out, getting that absolute jewel of a cruiser out of there.

It was named Odalisque Ill, and it was the splendid playtoy of Lady Vivian Stanley-Tucker of St. Kitts. It was a fifty-three-foot Magnum Maltese Flybridge cruiser, built in North Miami Beach. Twin turbocharged diesels cruised it at an honest thirty miles an hour. Paneling, radar, recording fathometer, air conditioning, ice-maker, tub and shower, huge master stateroom, double autopilot system, stereo music, wine locker, microwave oven, live wells, loran, pile carpeting. I knew it would knock close to a half million without extras, and it was the third time her husband had given her a boat for her birthday.

"The other two were hunuunge!" she had said. "Great vulgar monsters. Had to have a crew aboard at all times. Now this one is cozy, what? Intimate, you might say. The old boy was playing the gold market and got pinched a bit. Apologized for the smaller boat."

I was over on the beach and had found a sandbar that was supporting more than its share of clams. Lady Vivian and I had been out about two weeks, provisions were running a little short, and soon we would have to decide whether to put in to Nassau or run on over to Miami. I was putting the clams in a string bag. The sun felt needle-hot on my bare back. I was turning saddle brown, and Lady Vivian had turned to a very lovely reddish gold, except for the sunburned tip of her nose.

The deep chord of the air horns made me look out toward the Odalisque. Shave and a haircut, two bits. Then she came out onto the bow, a tiny golden figure in a white bikini, and motioned me to come aboard.

I hung the string bag around my neck, swam out through the warm crystal-clear water, and came up the boarding ladder.

The Green Ripper

"Good nap?"

"Splendid! And I felt absolutely marvelous until, like the dutiful person I am, I turned on the thing- ajiggy at call time, as usual, and damn me if the old bustard wasn't trying to get me. Baaaaad news, sweet McGeeee. I have to fly on down. His damned awful sister has decided to come out for a visit, and he thinks it would look most odd if Em not there to greet the old party. So what I told him, I would go on into Nassau tomorrow and fly from there, and find some dear friend who'll take the Odalisque on over to Lauderdale. Who might that dear friend be?"

"Give me a hint."

'hymn, I was having such a lovely time. And we're getting so horribly healthy. All this popping into bed must be awfully good for one."

Though tiny in the distance, she was substantial up close, a green-eyed, toffee-haired woman just barely on the sunny side of forty, if you could be]ieve her. She gave the healthy impression of someone about to burst out of her clothes, and in fact was willing so to do when the provocation was suffi- ciently explicit. She had very fine-textured skin, gentle as cream, and her body temperature seemed to run permanently at about four degrees above normal. In bed she was like a stove. She radiated both heat and need.

I put the clams away for later, washed up, and then mixed us a pair of the sour rum drinks she

279

John D. Macl)onald doted on. We sat out on the afterdeck under the tarp I had rigged for shade.

We touched glasses, and as she sipped, she smiled with her eyes.

"So, there will be another cruise at least," she said.

"As long as I can last."

"You are a dear man. I see no sign of faltering, as yet."

'Y sneak megadoses of vitamins, Viv."

"You are the only person in this whole wide world I have ever allowed to call me Viv. Why do I like it when you say it?"

"Because you are helplessly in love with me."

That got a hoot of laughter, her great bawdy laugh of derision. "You know, dearest McGeeee, I would feel a great deal better if [d been able to pin you down about really helping us."

'if don't think I could do any good."

"Utter nonsense! You could do it easily, probe bly. It was my money, you know, not Sir Charles's. From my Uncle Memman. His people made it in the War of the Roses, or some bloody thing like that, seeing slop to both sides, I imagine. After death duties, not very much came down to me, as you can imagine. But it was comforting. You would know. You wake in the night and think of something that you might want, and you know you can buy it. It was truly a magnificent necklace. For forty thousand pounds, it had to be. And somehow,

280

The ~ m"- - between appraisals, that wretched little animal switched it on us and now pretends to know nothing about it, and there is nothing we can do. Should you get it back for we, dear heart, we shalt auction it at Christie's and give you half the gavel price. Your customary arrangement, isn't it?"

"When I work, * is. I work when I need money. Otherwise I am retired. Like now."

'aria! Living off my involuntary generosity? Last night the only possible roll to escape a double gammon was that incredible six four you rolled. Dear, I am really terribly serious about the necklace. Would you try? For me? For jolly old Viv?"

"Why not? 111 need the one he substituted, probably. 1~11 try to work something out."

"Bless you!"

And the great warm tide of her pleasure and her gratitude took us down into the cool humming, buzzing grotto of the Odalisque below decks, into the deep bunk leaving behind us on the carpeting a hasty trail of bikini top, swim truffle, and bikini bottom where, with the accompaniment of her giggles and sighs and little instructional signals, we played our favorite game of winding up that lmcurious engine of a body of hers to such an aching pitch that a single Might touch, carefully planned, pushed her over the edge. After that, as always, she went into lazy yawning, smiles, a gentle kiss, and her deep deep sleep.

I picked up the discarded clothing, put -on my trunks, and quietly fixed an oversized old-fashioned glass full of ice and Boodles. Sipping size. I went topside to the By bridge, lounged on the padded bench in the fading heat of the late afternoon sun.

I remembered how it had been when I had come back home to Bahia Mar, to The Busted Flush, in mid-February, after the teams of skilled interrogators had pulled every last scrap of information, no matter how trivial or unrelated, out of the stubborn tangle in the back of my mind. It took me a week to tell Meyer all of it, at my own pace, quitting whenever I came up against something that needed more thought before I could talk about it willingly.

Meyer had been patient and understanding and, best of all, willing to believe what I still considered unbelievable.

"Travis, did you get any clue at all about whether they can stop the other teams?"

'] saw Max and Jake one more time, a few days before they let me come home. They let me ask some questions. They didn't answer a lot of them. They'd acted quickly enough to terminate a few of the training centers, but the rest of them moved out in time. At best it will push the target date further into the future. Maybe it will begin to happen a year from now."

'~What about that Brussels thing?"

"A dead end. It was probably going to be one of their restaging areas, for retraining and re-equipping the survivors of the early strikes."

The Green Ripper

"And Gretel had the bad luck to see Titus. That was why they... did away with her?"

"He was the link between the Church of the Apocrypha and the terrorist arm. They had a fat file on him, but not as an important wheel in the Church. Now the Church has gone underground. That cripples the financing. They probably over- reacted. If they had just given up the land purchase, forfeited the payment, it would have been enough What could Gretel have done, other than tell Ladwigg she had recognized his visitor? Overkill. Paranoia. Maybe just an urge to test a new deadly toy." o did kill her?"

Nobody seems to know. Or care very much. It wasn't anything particularly personal, killing her or Ladwigg. It was just a case of thug to tidy up a security lapse."

'~Will you be told anything more?"

~ 'There's no need ever to contact me again,' false said."

"Are you sure you're all right?" Meyer asked earnestly.

'Y don't know how I am. Or exactly who I am."

"Remember when I talked about the new barbarism last December? About the toad-lizard thing with the rotten breath, squatting in its cave? You met it, Travis. You felt the lizard breath. It is man's primal urge to decimate himself down to numbers which can exist on the wornout planet. It is man's self-hatred. The god of the lemmings, and of the poisonous creatures which can die of their own venom. It takes time to back away from that, Travis. Time."

It had taken most of the five months to finish the job of sorting myself out. Meyer had put me on the right track. I didn't know what he had meant when he said to me, 'Not one of us ever grows up to be what he intended to be. Not one- of us fulfills his own expectations, Travis. We are all our own children, in that sense. At some point, somewhere, we have to stop making demands."

There was no great moment of my saying, "Aha!" or 'eureka!" It just slowly came clear, like the mist rising on a mountain morning. There was a black, deep, dreadful ravine separating me from all my previous days. Over there on the other side were the pathetic and innocent little figures of world- that-once-was. McGee and his chums. McGee and Gretel. McGee and his toys and visions.

I could not approach the edge of that ravine and look down. Far far below were the bodies of the dead.

And here I was, on this side. This side was today. This side was the crystal taste of icy gin, me brute weight of tropic sun, the tiny beads of sweat on my forearm, the lovely lines of the Magnum Maltese, those white popcorn gulls way out there, afloat after feeding, Viv's glad little cries of love, the way the stars would shine tonight, the way the

The Green Ripper clams would taste, the way we would fit together as we slept.

I tasted all the tastes of today and felt in me a rising joy that this could be true. I had raised my- self up from many madnesses to be exactly what I am. It had become too constant a pain to try endlessly to be what I thought I should become.

I thought I saw movement over toward the shallows, sixty feet away, where the water danced in sunlight. I looked in the drawer and took out the Polaroid glasses and put them on. Yes, there were some bonefish tailing across the grass, feeding. I went down and changed the rig on the little Orvis spinner, knifed open a clam for bait, sneaked out near the transom and was barely able to drop the clam far enough ahead of them so as not to spook them.

For a little while I thought they would feed right on by, but then came the soft mouthy movement. I counted to three and gave him a quick little hit, and he took off, screaming the reel, hissing the line. There is an almost indescribable elegance about that first run of a big bonefish.. Big meaning anytking from five pounds to ten. No flap, no wobble, just incredibly smooth acceleration. He circled from the port quarter around the stern about a hundred feet from the boat, and around to starboard. I had no hope of turning him. I managed to pass the rod around the aerial and outrigger without losing him, but I could not manage to get up the ladderway to the bridge fast enough to clear the line, and he broke loose. I laughed at myself, and I wished the fish good luck and long life. His acids would dissolve the hook within days. He would have something to tell the others. How he outwitted monsters.

I stowed the rod and went back up to the gin. The sun was moving down toward the horizon, losing some of its sting. Viv came climbing up to the fly bridge, glass in hand. She was wearing a short beach robe with big red polkadots. She kissed me. She smelled of her French soap, and tasted of her mint toothpaste. She put her drink down, combed her hands back through her hair and stretched on tiptoe, then sat down, sipped her drink, and smiled at me.

No need for words. Her eyes were wishing me luck and long life. I had outwitted monsters.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John D. MacDonald was graduated from Syracuse University and received an MBA from the Harvard Business School. He and his wife, Dorothy, had one son and several grandchildren. Mr. MacDonald died in December 1986.

The End