UNKNOWABLE (Murder on the Mekong, Book 2)

by Rivers, Hart;

  Aaah, drama and pageantry, thought The Pale Man, now this is more fun!

  Chapter 37

  As the human-sacrifice bombs exploded in front of them, JD weighed their options.

  They could stay and try looking as innocuous as possible while mayhem ensued, with several other riders dismounting to race towards the broken remains of familiar faces…

  Or, they could race as fast as possible for jungle cover.

  He glanced to his right at Izzy, who was gagging in response to the carnage, then to his left at Gregg. He was holding it together, but even a bath in elephant dung couldn’t disguise his California, surfer-boy looks on a twenty-foot inspection. There wasn’t much choice.

  The gunship was already descending. It could open fire at close range. They had to take their chances that The Pale Man would prefer a game of chase over an easy kill, and consider the elephants spoils of war too valuable to endanger.

  “Follow me!” he shouted at Gregg and Izzy. “Don’t look back!”

  But JD looked back and kept looking back, while shouting the command to “Chay! Chay!” The elephants obeyed, running at a fast clip for their mammoth size, with Gregg and Izzy holding on for dear life. JD might have damned Kate for her role in all this if he didn’t still love her on some level, and he damned himself more for that. One look at her lying eyes, one taste of her lying mouth when she threw herself at him on the boat, one glance at the nail polish that reminded him too much of Maman’s dangling toes and the color of her lipstick on an old initialed handkerchief, and he knew.

  Kate was good but she wasn’t a master of the game he’d been at most of his life. Phillip should have known that, the viper.

  The huge, electric buzz of a million insects surrounded them as they entered the jungle. JD calculated about eight klicks—five miles—to the nearest hidden jeep. He knew this jungle, the paths for egress, and he could hotwire a car in seconds flat, as he had in the deep night of their escape from the boat. They needed a new destination now, and the best he had was the monastery, half a day’s journey away. But he wasn’t willing to put the monastery at risk—The Pale Man would gun down monks and students alike and thoroughly enjoy it.

  No, their safest bet was to find some legitimate Special Forces doing their GI thing here in the Highland outback, and get choppered out to Nha Trang. While it was risky, sending Gregg and Izzy back would at least add one more step for Phillip if he was to permanently silence them. He just had to find a way to silence Phillip first, make a move that Phillip wouldn’t see coming.

  By some miracle they made it to the jeep, camouflaged inside a narrow cave. JD was already hotwiring it while Gregg dismounted—only for Izzy to slide off and send a group of birds screeching—good as a smoke signal to anyone following—as he screamed, “Shit! My ankle. I think I just broke it!”

  Gregg strapped an arm around Izzy, got him to his one good foot, and helped him hobble to the damn jeep that didn’t want to start.

  And didn’t want to start.

  While the elephants took off, back the way they’d come.

  It was the worst of all scenarios that made JD fleetingly wish he only had himself to look out for. Or, that he was still the guy that would have left them while he covered his own ass, instead of actually caring more about the welfare of those who were only here because of him.

  A conscience. Amazing. He still had one. So much for: When in danger, sacrifice.

  A burst of automatic weapon fire opened up and JD hoped it wasn’t directed at the elephants they’d been riding, charging their way home. But no matter how much he hoped, the three of them were not escaping any weapon fire themselves by jeep.

  “Sorry, guys, the only way we’re getting anywhere is on foot. Gregg, you grab Izzy on one side, I’ve got the other. Izzy, I know you’re hurting…” His boot was twisted into an unnatural L that indicated his ankle was likely dislocated and broken. “Just try not to groan. We’ll tend to you as soon as we can.”

  He got them off the path the jeep would be on and into the jungle as deeply as he could. But he could not make snakes and jungle vines and hordes of insects disappear, or do much for Izzy’s foot. It was going to need surgery. JD was sure of it after they paused long enough to cut through the boot that was doing more damage than good as it kept hitting obstacles on the jungle floor and escalating Izzy’s pain. A quick inspection verified Izzy’s ankle was a fat, swollen, dislocated and broken ball of what must be pure agony. At least for someone who wasn’t highly trained in the endurance of pain.

  JD made his best suggestion, such as it was. “I can try snapping the bone back into place.”

  “No!” Izzy howled, hardly coherent.

  “It’s okay,” Gregg assured him, “we won’t do that. If we had our medic kit and some morphine, or even something strong and liquid, maybe, but…Izzy, hang in there. Please, just hang on. We’re still here. We’re with you. It will all be okay.” Then to JD he whispered, “I’m afraid he’s going into shock.”

  Izzy’s incessant moaning indicated he was closer to it than not.

  All too aware they were most likely being tracked and leaving evidence everywhere for anyone in pursuit, while announcing they were on their way to anyone ahead—like, say, the VC—JD whispered sharply, “Listen to me. Try to get your mind off the pain and into another place. Think about Margie. Think about your mom’s matzo-ball soup that you say is the best. Or imagine you’re back in med school and doing your first surgery. Just try to get into some kind of zone that’s not here.”

  “Okay,” Izzy gasped. “Okay. How much longer?”

  “We’re heading toward the river.”

  “What’s the plan once we get there?” Gregg swiped his free hand over the remains of the dung on his forehead, most of it sweated off, his blond hair like a beacon under his straw hat.

  “I’m working on it. I just know we’re better off closer to shore than trying to make camp in the jungle once it’s dark. Unless, that is, the two of you prefer the jungle.”

  “Water,” said Gregg.

  “Thirsty,” panted Izzy.

  He hadn’t brought enough water. He had used the last of it to clean Izzy’s wound. At home as he was himself out here, these guys belonged in universities and hospitals, not in the wilds of the Highlands. It sure hadn’t helped that after shattering his ankle, Izzy had quite possibly been bitten by something venomous. He had bites all over his face, and the hands they’d kept draped over their shoulders, unable to swipe away spiders and everything else creepy crawly the jungle had to offer.

  JD looked around and up.

  “Okay, take a break. I see some coconuts with your names on them.”

  Izzy wondered if he was hallucinating, while his body felt as if it was being dragged along and his one good foot took another hop forward. He was wondering about will and hope and could hear the whisper in his head saying, Quit, give up and just let it go. Why go on to just die more broken and tired than you are already? Why not just sink down and sleep. If they find you they will shoot you and it will be over. No more of the clouds of biting things, and sweating; no more bleeding, no blinding pain…

  He tried to think of Margie, of his mom’s soup, of where he wished he could be, but those images gave way to thoughts of Viktor Frankl. Maybe Frankl had the answer. Frankl, so brilliant, so strong. Pioneer of the mind; survivor of the Holocaust. How did he do it? How did he survive such will-sucking torment? How did he keep himself sane? How did he do it?

  He was just stronger than you, said the voice. He was made of different, better stuff.

  Izzy’s mind drifted back and back to the special seminar group in his residency. They were all the cool, bright, we-must-be-brilliant, we-are-at-Columbia, we-are-in-the-special-seminar-sitting-comfortably-on-our-leather-chairs group, pouring out another drink for one another, competing constantly each and every minute in the discussions to show the professor which of us has just a little better understanding, who is smarter, more insightful, who reads a li
ttle more deeply and widely than the others…Yes, he had been the one who thought he understood what Frankl was writing about, what he knew about will and hope…

  But he had been so wrong, so young and pretentious and full of himself. He had known absolutely nothing but the words, nothing about the actual suffering he was reading about. But now he knew; maybe he knew a little something about Frankl and suffering and humanity and grace…

  He stumbled and almost went down again, dead weight held up by Gregg and JD, both their arms under his, the two of them supporting him for how long? Hours? Days?

  “I can’t go on,” Izzy croaked.

  “If I have to put you on my back and drag you through this goddamn jungle, I will,” Gregg wheezed, struggling for breath.

  “C’mon, Izzy, just a little further.” JD’s voice. Calm and certain. “You can do it. You have the strength. You have the will. And we’ve got you.”

  Izzy remembered then what Frankl had said about those he saw in the camps, those that kept on doing the human thing, kept on seeing the good things, the beauty amidst desecration. His vision blurry, he looked from Gregg to JD and realized…

  They were the kind of people Frankl was writing about.

  They were the ones who refused to let him give up, or to give up on him, even though the easy thing was to try to save their own lives. For how much longer they kept going, Izzy didn’t know. He only knew there was a glimmer of light just up ahead, the sound of water, and JD saying, “Okay, Izzy, you did great. Gregg, looks like you could use a rest and—looks like we might have just caught our escape vehicle. Stay here.”

  Through the haze of exhaustion, pain, and whatever else had gone into his bloodstream, Izzy saw JD run toward what was definitely water and wave his hands at a raft of logs and some men steering it with poles. He shouted at them in some language and held up something, maybe money, since the raft was coming their way.

  JD gestured for them to come on, and Gregg was being Frankl again, helping him go just a little bit further on the wings of hope and will, when they fully emerged from the jungle and a new sound that didn’t belong to the jungle came from overhead.

  Izzy looked up. No. No! Please, no. He knew he wasn’t thinking clearly—his vision was murky—but it looked as though the gunship they had run from, the one that had spilled out live bodies like screaming confetti hurtling towards the ground, was coming right at them.

  JD yelled, “Get back! Get down!” as he ran their way.

  The raft and the men in it exploded. Flying debris mingled with more gunfire, and then the sharp sensation of something entering his chest.

  The last thing Izzy saw was Gregg falling over him, their arms still interlocked.

  Chapter 38

  Kate sat in the window seat of her luxurious suite at the Dalat Palace Hotel. She gazed out across the gardens towards the lake. The jasmine-scented breeze that came off the water and garden was soothing. She could use more soothing. She wished she could drink it. Her body felt like a violin string ready to snap. Being in the “Big Leagues” was not at all what she had expected. She was still shaken by the sudden murder of JD’s beloved brother right in front of her eyes, killed in cold blood with a single command from The Pale Man.

  Phillip’s association with him went back before she was even born. She understood Phillip’s need to be the power behind the throne that Paulu was posturing upon with his typical, narcissistic aplomb. Paulu was Phillip’s front man. Paulu’s obscene amount of money and influence and new position of power would shield Phillip while he went about doing other important things on the world stage.

  She understood all that. What she did not understand was that Phillip, after his initial distress over The Poppy King’s murder, had decided it wasn’t such a bad thing after all. He had also decided that getting away would be to their mutual benefit when she made it clear that this was not the job she had signed up for.

  There was a short knock on the door from the adjoining suite, and before she could say, “Come in” or race to the bathroom again, Phillip swept in, impeccably dressed and groomed, open champagne bottle in hand.

  “Ah Kathryn, you aren’t still brooding are you? Here, this will refresh you.” He poured two flutes, handed her one, then opened an old silver cigarette case and offered her a Gauloises.

  Kate shook her head.

  “Phillip, we need to talk.”

  “But of course, my dear.” He sat beside her on the window seat, the companionable and lovely man she recognized. Not the one she had begun to wonder if she knew at all. “Now, tell me what is on your mind?”

  “Much is on my mind, Phillip. Such as how much was I led to believe was true, that actually is not?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Coyness does not become you, Phillip.” She cocked her head, studying him. He had beautiful eyelashes. The strong slope of his eyebrows and the shape of his jaw reminded her of JD. Any further similarities, however, were thin; they were completely different men. “I’ve begun to wonder if you still plan to shut down the poppy fields as soon as it’s feasible. I thought that was the ultimate goal. Or if keeping them open to fill the CIA’s coffers and milking those poppies for all they’re worth, for as long as possible, is closer to what you really have in mind?”

  He shrugged, just slightly. “Well, my dear, as it so often goes in the affairs of state and love, things do have a way of changing. What makes sense one day may need to be reconsidered the next.”

  “And that’s your answer?” She had a sudden, forceful urge to yank out a hand of the perfect hair he didn’t like mussed, maybe twist off his touch-me-not ears while she was at it.

  “Have you other questions?” he answered in response, which was clearly answer enough.

  “Yes. Do you have any idea where Doctors Kelly and Moskowitz are?”

  His slight hesitation told her yes, even before he said, “They are in a safe place. Doctor Moskowitz was badly injured but is receiving excellent medical care.”

  “Where? At the 8th Field Hospital?”

  Phillip took too long sipping his champagne while avoiding her gaze. The champagne was not sitting well on her stomach at all. None of this was. She sat her glass on a small table beside the window seat and prompted, “Where is he, Phillip?”

  “Dr. Moskowitz,” Phillip finally said, “is in a private facility, but will be returned to Nha Trang once he is sufficiently recovered to make the trip. With your good friend Doctor Kelly, of course.”

  Kate didn’t believe him. “And just where is the private facility? I’d like to see them.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

  “And why not?”

  Phillip took another long sip of his champagne while her mind darted in all directions. JD had said he would take care of Gregg and Izzy; he had told her to keep her mouth shut about his still being alive, that Phillip especially was not to know. Which meant Izzy and Gregg were either still with JD at some undisclosed facility, or they were on their own because JD was really dead now. With all her confused feelings and anger and doubts about JD, in her heart of hearts she did not believe he would willingly desert them.

  There were too many potential scenarios to know what was really going on: if Izzy was truly hurt; if he and Gregg really were in a safe place; whether or not JD was alive to watch after them. But she could no longer count on Phillip to be honest with her, and if he had information on JD beyond her report of his drowning, then Phillip obviously was not sharing what he knew with her either.

  So, here they were at a stalemate, neither of them divulging their confidences or knowing how far they extended. All her belief over the years in Phillip’s painful honesty slid sadly away. The urge to cry was strong, and she hated to cry, hated how unusually sensitive and emotional she had been feeling of late. Though watching someone you brought to a table murdered in cold blood, with part of that blood on your hands, could do that to a girl who had been too hasty, and too ambitious, to r
ealize she was being used.

  The backs of her eyes stung while a terrible premonition she could no longer ignore forced a looming, critical question past the constriction of her throat.

  “The file in your briefcase on JD. It was all true, wasn’t it? You didn’t deliberately plant false information for me to find…did you?”

  Phillip cleared his throat. “You shouldn’t have gone through my briefcase.” He managed to sound indignant. “That’s classified information.”

  Phillip’s stately head rocked back with the force of her strike, the imprint of her hand in bold relief against his freshly shaven cheek. The perfectly barbered hair, the perfectly shaven face, the perfectly tailored clothes and even perfectly manicured nails, everything perfect, perfect, perfect and suddenly she hated it all.

  “I suppose I deserved that,” he said with a maddening, diplomatic calm. “Are you quite through now?”

  She wanted to slap him again. She wanted to ruin his clothes and everything else he relied on to sustain his above-the-fray image. Instead she grabbed him by the ears, meaning to box them as if he were a schoolboy and she was the adult, their positions solidly reversed and staying that way.

  A slightly raised protrusion behind his right earlobe stopped her cold.

  She flipped up the underside of his lobe while Phillip tried to push her hand away, his reaction more defensive than when she had slapped him.

  “What is this?” she demanded, moving in closer to better examine the aberration, a strawberry hemangioma she had seen before. Just not on Phillip. “On the back of your ear, what is it?”

  “It’s nothing. Just an oddity I inherited from my father’s side of the family.” He firmly removed her hand, stood, delivered a forced smile. “You know I don’t like having my ears touched. But I must say your show of spirit never fails to stimulate a certain desire for touching of a more intimate kind. Since something tells me you aren’t quite in the mood for that now, I suggest we remove ourselves from here, go out for a nice dinner and put all this behind us. Hopefully you’ll be ready for us to make proper amends by the time we return. Shall we?”