Beware the Jabberwock (Post Cold War Thrillers)

by Chester D. Campbell

  Brackin slammed into the outstretched arms, knocking Sarge off his feet as the pistol toppled to the floor. Brackin fell right on top of him.

  Burke sat with his mouth agape, unable to believe the gun hadn't fired. Brackin quickly picked himself up and snatched the gun off the floor. The heavyset old man just lay there on his back, as if in shock.

  "I've been looking around," Burke said. "There's a hacksaw blade on that bench." He nodded toward the near wall.

  Brackin grabbed the blade and sawed at the ropes holding Burke. As soon as he had one wrist loose, Burke took the blade and freed the other. Brackin moved back to check on Sarge, who had begun struggling to get up.

  "You'll be better off just sitting right there," Brackin said. "Where are your pills?"

  Sarge hung his head. "Back in the room. They rushed me over here. I didn't have a chance to get 'em. How did you know?"

  Brackin smiled. "I'm a doctor. A neurologist. I've got lots of patients like you."

  By then, Burke was standing at his side. "You crazy fool. You ought to be dead."

  "I'll explain later," Brackin said. "We'd better get this guy tied up before his buddy returns."

  They stuffed a handkerchief in his mouth so he couldn't alert Ted, then moved him into one of the chairs and started to tie him to it.

  "How did you get loose?" Burke asked. "I thought that arm was disabled."

  "It's not in too good a shape right now, especially since I fell on it when I clobbered our friend here. While I was in the chair, I kept working my fingers to keep them loose. One of my hobbies is magic. You know, sleight of hand. I put on magic shows at a children’s hospital on a regular basis.”

  “Yeah, Lori told me.”

  “With one hand mostly free, the rope was no challenge. And I wasn't taking the chance you thought when I rushed him."

  "Why not?"

  "He has Parkinson's Disease. Tremor in his hands and muscular rigidity made him unable to fire the gun. That service .45 takes a hefty trigger pull. I'd noticed marked bradykinesia and significant postural dysfunction."

  "Hold it, doc! English, please."

  Brackin flashed an apologetic grin. "Sorry. You may have noticed the way he moves slowly, with a flat-footed shuffle. There's no arm swing. He has difficulty with his hands. He couldn't untie the knot holding my arm. He's overdue for a dose of levodopa, which would give him a little better control. I was certain enough of the diagnosis to risk my neck on it."

  Burke had one wrist tied, but Sarge wouldn't, or couldn't, keep the other one still. "Grab that arm for me, will you?" he asked Brackin.

  Walt had been holding the gun in his left hand. He wasn't sure the right one could handle it. He laid it on the floor and held Sarge's arm.

  Ted burst through the door, talking rapidly as he entered. "Hey, Sarge, I found your—"

  His voice clipped off as he saw what was happening.

  Burke was on one knee, behind and to the left of the chair. When he saw Ted's hand reach back, he knew there must be a holster on his belt. Burke grabbed for the .45 that lay on the floor beside him.

  Ted drew his gun, firing off two quick rounds as he dropped into a crouch. The movement threw him off balance and foiled his aim. The first shot hit Sarge squarely in the chest, the second pulled farther to the right and caught Burke's left arm at the shoulder.

  It wasn't enough to hobble Burke, who by now had raised the heavy automatic with both hands and squeezed off a shot. He would have preferred to disable the man, but he followed his training and targeted the center mass of the crouching figure. The bullet dropped Ted on the spot.

  Burke jumped up and ran toward him, holding the pistol ready to fire again, the adrenalin pumping. He knew single shots rarely disabled an assailant, but then he saw the wound. The round had penetrated the front of Ted's skull and blown a large hole out the rear. He lay with his head outside the door, blood turning the brown sand beneath him a rusty red. The eyes were open, the shock still mirrored in their lifeless stare.

  Burke felt a sudden tightness in his chest, almost as though Ted had punched his stomach again. He was still sore from the beating, but he knew that wasn't it. He had been involved in other shootouts during his FBI career, but he had never killed a man before. It wasn't a proud or pretty sight. But one thing was clear. If he hadn't been on target with that shot, the next one coming his way certainly would have been.

  He looked back to see that Brackin had ripped off Sarge's shirt and was examining the wound. He walked over hesitantly.

  The doctor glanced up, shaking his head. "It traveled on an angle, through the heart, apparently ruptured the aorta. A lot of dark, arterial blood. Nothing we can do for him." He stood up, looking sad and impotent. There was nothing more frustrating for a physician than to know that he lacked the means for saving a patient.

  Burke stooped over the old soldier and frowned. A few days stubble of beard gave the dying cook a rough-hewn look. Burke wondered if he had served in World War II? He certainly hadn’t deserved this fate, though it resulted from giving his loyalty to the wrong crowd. Though the real goal of Jabberwock was still unclear, he now knew it involved a deadly plot.

  When he realized that he still gripped Sarge’s old Army sidearm, Burke laid it carefully on the floor beside its owner. Now that they were alone on the island, they had no need for weapons, and he wasn’t interested in possibly getting caught on the mainland with somebody else’s handgun.

  Brackin walked over, looking at Burke's left shoulder. "Get your shirt off and let me see that wound."

  Burke hadn't noticed the blood on his shirt until then. He pulled it off and eyed the tear in the flesh. It didn’t appear serious.

  "Let's go find a bathroom and clean it up," Brackin said, starting toward the door. He stopped when he came to the body lying across the threshold, bent down to stare at the wound. "Should we move him?"

  Burke considered it a moment. "No, let's leave everything exactly as is." The gun with two shots fired lay beside the lifeless hand.

  "Let them figure out what happened?"

  "Exactly. I'll leave the .45 on the floor over there. I doubt they could separate my prints from Sarge’s. They wouldn’t bother with that anyway. There isn’t likely to be an investigation of this affair. Let them draw their own conclusions."

  It would soon be five o'clock. Judging by Jeffries' report, Lori had evidently moved farther out as scheduled at four-fifteen. They still had an hour before she was to radio the Coast Guard. Finding a restroom in the office building with hot water, soap and a towel, Brackin washed the area on Burke's arm. He pulled a small first aid kit from a pocket of his fatigues, applied an antibiotic and bandaged the wound.

  With the arm taken care of, they searched the office and turned up both pistols that had been taken from them after their capture, along with Burke's billfold. Burke also noticed a pad beside the telephone covered with scribbles, probably Ted's doodling while he talked. There was a phone number mixed in with the boxes and circles and arrows. It seemed vaguely familiar, but he had dealt with too many numbers lately. Through disuse, he supposed, he had lost some of his old facility for memorizing numbers and assorted unrelated facts. He tore a sheet from the pad and wrote down the phone number, along with the license number from the truck, which was still clearly etched in his brain.

  Checking out the control panel beside the communications equipment, he found the switch that energized the electrical field for the perimeter security system. Apparently it had been turned on again after the boat left. The lights, however, were off. He switched the intrusion detectors off as well.

  Outside, the rain had arrived, coming down in a steady shower. They scouted around the area and quickly found the raft behind the office building. Burke was a little surprised to see it intact. The only explanation he could come up with was that they had planned to leave it as evidence to explain the abandoned boat south of the island.

  Brackin's arm had begun to give him more problems at the shoulde
r joint, while Burke's stomach and arm both made him grit his teeth as he began to exert himself. With some difficulty, they pulled the raft across the sand to the loading ramp, where the LCM had landed. One tugged, the other pushed, and they finally got it into the water, climbed in and started the motor. The rain had intensified, quickly soaking their clothing and bringing a real chill to the gusting wind. The storm, as such unpredictable phenomena are often driven to do, had arrived early.

  Ever since she had seen the lights flash on around the island, Lori had fretted over what to do. Burke and Walt had long since moved inland from the beach. What did it mean? When the lights were extinguished, and a plane took off, she became even more uneasy. Then she saw the plane circling toward her and ducked into the cabin. It continued around in a climb and headed off toward the mainland. She was tempted to call the Coast Guard right then, but they had agreed on the procedures to follow and she would stick by them. She would wait until six.

  It was around five-forty when she spotted the small beam of light through the rain. She trained the binoculars on it. She counted the flashes. One...two...three, pause, one. That was the signal. But it was much farther east than the course they had taken to the island. She checked again to be sure, then started the inboard and switched on Elvira's lights. She steered in the direction of the flashing beam and soon saw the raft bobbing along on the waves.

  Burke pushed Brackin up the swim ladder, then climbed after him, favoring his left shoulder. Both slumped on the cockpit bench, exhausted.

  Lori frowned at the blood on Burke's shirt and asked with alarm, "Are you all right? What happened?"

  "It's a long story," he said. "Let's get the hell out of here before that plane comes back."

  GULF OF MEXICO

  Chapter 39

  The weather turned progressively worse. Burke and Walt Brackin were forced to suffer through the painful exercise of pulling on their foul weather gear over soaked fatigues. A drenching torrent poured from the dark gray skies, as though punishment from some malevolent sea god for invasion of his watery domain. The wind-driven droplets struck their faces like stinging pellets. To get the boat moving, they had no choice but to use the inboard engine. The sails would have capsized them in the explosive gusts. It wasn't exactly what Burke had anticipated for his first sailing expedition.

  "If there's any consolation in this," he shouted above the din of wind and waves, "it's that nobody's going to be out here in an airplane looking for us."

  "That's good news?" Lori said. "If we end up in the drink, you'll be wishing you could find a plane up there."

  Burke forced a grin. "I guess it's all a matter of perspective." Then his face sobered. Had they managed to escape from the claws of the Jabberwock only to end up as breakfast for a pack of hungry sharks? It wasn't a fate he cared to dwell upon.

  "Can I help with that wheel?" Brackin offered as he watched Lori struggle to hold the course.

  "I'm not sure you could handle it, Walt. Better take it easy and rest that shoulder."

  "You're probably right. When...if we get back, I need to check in at an emergency room and get this x-rayed. I may have a fracture."

  Lori fought the seas gamely. She worked to maintain a course toward the mainland by steering slightly to the west, hoping to counteract the drifting effect of the wind. A loran set would have come in handy to guide them in, but, of course, the boat had not been intended for use in this kind of weather. Waves poured over the bulwark with every dip of the hull. It served to wash the deck clean, which appeared fortunate. Sailing in choppy waters was a new experience for Burke, and it wasn't long before he began heaving up what remained of his dinner. He was quickly reduced to clutching the nearest hand-hold, his head hung to one side, eyes closed, praying he'd find a way to get his stomach off that roller-coaster it seemed to be riding.

  The small boat pitched and rolled, managing to struggle shoreward at no more than four or five knots. Lori knew she had done some crazy things in her life, but this one came close to topping the list. She had to admire Burke for the dogged way he had pursued this investigation. It would have been much easier to have dropped it and returned to his uncomplicated life in the Smokies. But he seemed to have a talent for getting the nasties of the world on his case, and she seemed to have a talent for getting caught up in the aftermath. Just when things were looking their bleakest, he managed to straighten up long enough to put an arm around her and say with complete confidence, "If anybody can get us back, you can." She knew there was no use in trying to get angry at him. He had the guileless charm of a natural-born snake oil salesman. For some reason, she found herself unable to resist his pitch.

  When they finally spotted land near midday, they discovered they were several miles east of their intended landfall at Cape St. George.

  Burke had managed somehow to revive himself enough to study the navigation chart. "Might as well head back west and hit the channel between St. George Island and Little St. George," he said. "That'll get us into the bay and away from these damnable waves."

  St. George was a barrier island that acted as a seawall for Apalachicola Bay. A narrow, twenty-five-mile-long strip of sand that had been developed with a string of homes and beachfront cabins, it also housed a popular tourist inn.

  Brackin had been enduring his misery in silence for most of the past hour. "I recommend we follow the old seaman's adage, any port in a storm. Let's beach this old girl and hit dry land."

  "That might attract a lot of attention," Burke said, a note of caution in his voice. "That's something we certainly don't need."

  Wearily, Lori agreed.

  Just as the storm had arrived early, it began its departure sooner than expected. As they negotiated the channel into the protected waters of the bay, the winds lost some of their ferocity and the rain tapered off to a modest shower. To the north, they saw streaks of lightning etch jagged white daggers across the sky, but the thunderstorms remained well beyond the shoreline. Even so, another hour had elapsed before they reached the marina at Apalachicola. The gas tank registered empty when they tied up.

  "You folks are either damned fine sailors or lucky as hell to be alive," the scraggly-faced proprietor said as they stumbled off the boat.

  Angler's Inn was only a short distance from the marina. Lori was given first shot at the hot shower and confided that she had never appreciated one more. After they had all dressed in clean, dry clothes, Burke and Lori collapsed onto the chairs, while Brackin stretched his long frame across the bed.

  Lori had snacked on candy bars for energy during the height of the ordeal, but now her preferences moved in a different direction. "Why don't we find a nice restaurant and discuss where to go from here?" she asked, mustering a cheerful smile.

  The way Burke's stomach felt, he wasn't sure he could do justice to a bowl of Jello. He was completely drained. He would have liked nothing better than to join Walt Brackin on that bed and just sleep for hours. But his instincts told him that was pure wishful thinking. The "old man," as Ted had called his superior, evidently the Jabberwock leader, now knew that Burke Hill, the photographer in Tel Aviv, and private eye Douglas Bell were one and the same. As soon as their break-out from Oyster Island was discovered, someone would be scouring the coastline for traces of either name. It would not take long to pinpoint them if they stayed put.

  "Sorry to be a party wrecker," he said, "but we don't have the luxury of time to sit around and plan. We'd best do it on the run. I doubt Jeffries would have tried to get back in that weather. But as soon as he does, we can expect somebody to be backtracking on us."

  Since conditions for conversation had been somewhat less than ideal during the harrowing journey aboard Elvira, Lori had managed to learn only the bare outlines of what had happened. It was enough to confirm what he was saying. "Then I suggest we pack up and get Walt to a hospital. On the way, you can fill me in on all the details. We can decide where to go from there."

  Panama City was much larger and less than an hour away
. They decided it would more likely be a place where a stranger in a hospital could maintain a degree of anonymity. Lori would accompany Brackin, and Burke would check the airport to find out what had happened to Jeffries. He guessed that the Jabberwock team would have arranged to rendezvous somewhere with Ingram and the truck. Although the TV control room on wheels was still a big question mark, he was certain that it must play a pivotal role in the operation.

  With that in mind, he stopped by to see Scooter Peyton as they drove through Port St. Joe. Scooter was in the process of locking up the place, dressed in yellow oilskins, looking like a character out of some frozen fish commercial.

  "Hi, Mr. Peyton," Burke said. "Looks like I just barely caught you."

  "Wouldn't have been here now if I hadn't had to help the boys get that damn LCM back up on the slip." Then he grinned. "Shouldn't cuss it, I guess. Was sure worth it."

  "What time did they get back?"

  "Oh, 'bout two hours ago, I'd say. That Ingram fella brought her in, said he'd off-loaded his crew with the vehicles. One came after him in a Jeep."

  "Tall, dark-haired?"

  "Maybe. Didn't get out. I told Ingram he was a mighty brave man. Really, I was thinking mighty stupid. Sailing that old boat in the kind of weather we had this morning. Damned if I'd have done it. He said it wasn't that bad when they started out." He gave a slight chuckle. "Looked worse'n a drowned rat when he got here."

  As they drove on to Panama City, Burke finished telling about his examination of the truck and the nearly disastrous ending to their Oyster Island expedition.

  "You left two bodies back there?" Lori asked, a drawn look on her face.

  "Right. I'm afraid that's not going to sit very well with the 'old man,' whoever he might be."

  "That's an understatement." She looked like someone who had just received news of a death in the family. "I would say you have now achieved Number One on two hit lists, Jabberwock and the CIA. That worries the hell out of me."