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
