Doc - 19 - Chasing Midnight

by Randy Wayne White

  “If I didn’t think the threat was real, I wouldn’t have improvised chemical weapons.”

  Kahn looked at the jar in his hand, surprised I’d applied those words to a stink bomb. “Chemical weapons,” he said finally. “Yeah… I guess it fits.” Maybe he was impressed, but then downplayed it, saying, “Cool. Unconventional weaponry, that’s the future. We have to use what we can until the last alpha warrior, in the last enemy tribe, is dead. How many times have we talked about this, Trapper?”

  The enemy warrior being me, I guessed. It was in Kahn’s tone and the way he challenged me by deciding to shake the jar again. Fortunately, though, the man lost interest when his flashlight discovered the TAM-14 unit lying near the couch. The way he rushed to claim the thing reminded me of a kid lunging for a toy on Christmas Day.

  Amphetamines or crystal meth? I was wondering. What was the drug of choice for male children whose manhood was trapped in a computer-simulated world?

  “Tape his hands,” Kahn told Trapper as he looked at the unit. “No… wait. Have Dragonfly tape his hands first. Then you tape him from his elbows down to his wrists. I’ll check it all when you’re done.”

  Adjusting the monocular’s headband, Kahn taunted me by telling his partner, “If he really is some special ops hotshot, like T claims, he’s got to be, you know, really dangerous. And we want to impress him, right?”

  14

  When I asked Kahn, “Do you still have a guard posted on the balcony?” I was trying to establish myself in the hierarchy of our little group and also account for the only members of Third Planet I hadn’t met.

  The Neinabor twins—the physical description matched the two chubby blond men I’d seen earlier, right down to the child’s computer bag. They had driven their van all the way from California only to be transformed when the shooting started.

  “Suddenly, they’re serious badasses,” Trapper had said.

  What worried me was that an abrupt transformation was possible. Fear is an unpredictable catalyst but always powerful. Some people cower, a few snap. Overwhelming fear can turn a timid man into a mad-dog killer. The effect might be greater on twins—or triplets—because it could mushroom exponentially, ping-ponging between them as their panic escalated.

  So far, I hadn’t been convinced that Kahn and his partner were capable of murder. The same might not be true of the Neinabors. Trapper had said they sometimes spoke to the dead triplet as if he were in the same room, a disturbing fact in itself.

  I wanted to hear more. My guess was, one of the Neinabors was the rapid-fire bungler who’d surprised Viktor and me at the dock. Bungler or not, he wasn’t afraid to pull the trigger. I also still didn’t know who was being held captive in the lodge. If one or both of the twins was guarding them—and still had some ammunition left—there might be carnage awaiting us.

  Ammunition, I’d been thinking about that. From all the gunfire I’d heard, everyone of the island had to be running low even if they’d equipped themselves for mass murder.

  Kahn wasn’t very talkative, though, because we’d heard two more distant gunshots when we were about halfway between the cottage and the lodge. The shots had scared him so badly that he and Trapper had dived for cover behind the banyan tree. Almost as an afterthought, they had ordered Umeko and me to drop to the ground, too.

  Once again, I asked Kahn if a guard had been posted. “I need to know details if I’m going to help you get back to the lodge without your asses being shot off. Play tough guy, though, and I think we’re all in serious trouble.”

  If Kahn believed I was a “gnarly special ops expert,” I was going to play the role to my advantage.

  Lying in prone position, pistol ready, the man was studying the open area ahead. “Those shots sounded pretty close,” he replied. “They sound close to you? Christ, there could be a sniper out there right now, waiting for us to make a move.”

  I was lying on my side, Trapper slightly behind me, Kahn to my right, the woman to my left. I whispered, “I think you might be right. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something. A person, I think, just after the shots were fired.”

  “Where? How far was he?”

  Scanning the patio near the swimming pool, then a cove formed by oak trees and Spanish moss, I replied, “If I was the guy, I’d wait until we were halfway across the clearing, then shoot the lead man. Which is you, Rez. Then pick off the rest of us when we panic.”

  Kahn slapped the ground with his hand. “Shit, he’s right.”

  I told him, “There’s a ledge below that tree that drops down four or five feet to the beach. Maybe he’s wearing night vision, too. He could have seen us, and slid behind the ledge until he has a clean shot.” A moment later, I added, “Is one of the Neinabor twins tall and lean? If not, it could be Armanie’s bodyguard.”

  Trapper whispered, “He’s lying, right? He just trying to scare us again.”

  “Did you get a look at Armanie’s security guy?” I asked. “The caviar people recruit from the Russian Special Forces. Spetz GRU, maybe you’ve heard of it. Their insignia is an owl because they supposedly learn how to see in the dark.”

  Kahn thought about that for a few seconds, his paranoia growing. “Shit, I knew we shouldn’t have left the goddamn cottage!”

  I added some drama by turning my head, then examining the front entrance beyond the porch as if gauging the odds of us making it before the shooter opened fire.

  Kahn asked me, “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking you’d better give me some information or we’re screwed. How many people are inside, and what about the guard? I need to know before I can offer advice.”

  The man was suddenly so eager to answer, he ran his words together. “Three women, I don’t know their names… local women, rich bitches, you know the type. Then there’s Winifred. That’s it. So what do you think we should do? Head back to the cottage?”

  I said, “What happened to the restaurant staff? There was a bartender and at least three servers. Where’d they go?” They were probably still hiding on the third floor, but I wanted to find out if Kahn knew they were there.

  “Dude, I have no idea! Everyone panicked and ran. There could be people hidden in some of the rooms, who knows? It was pretty crazy for a while after the lights went out.”

  Only three hostages, not counting Densler and Tomlinson? It took some effort not to show my surprise. “Are they tied and gagged?”

  Kahn was close to emotional overload. “Why the hell would we bother? No one in their right mind would leave that place with all that shooting. That’s why I posted Trapper on a balcony to stand guard. Damn it!”—he slapped the ground again—“When Winifred said they wouldn’t let us come to this caviar deal, I should have figured out it was reverse psychology. The same with that dolphin place. Someone knew we’d come—it’s a goddamn plot.”

  I whispered, “You planned on attacking the casino, too?”

  “No! Just confront them and get it on video. Hell, we didn’t plan on attacking this place, either. It… things just snowballed when everyone panicked. I should have known we were being set up. Ever since we started hassling their fishing boats, they’ve been plotting ways to get rid of us. You have no idea how many enemies we’ve made.”

  I couldn’t pretend to take the man seriously, so I chose to fan his paranoia. “It’s dangerous to screw with power.”

  “Exactly what I’m saying. First, they knock out the Internet, then they arrest all the activists during the chaos. Shit, it could even be the Illuminati. They’ve been manipulating governments for five hundred years. Look on the back of a dollar bill—the pyramid and all-seeing eye.”

  I was thinking, He’s reciting the synopsis of a video game.

  Kahn gestured with his head to indicate Umeko. “Remember her saying how much power the old Chinese guy had? He was probably one of them.” Then Kahn asked Trapper, “Did you notice what kind of ring the old man was wearing? Shit, I should have checked.”

  No, I dec
ided, Kahn wasn’t reciting. He believed what he was saying, which was eerie. Maybe he sensed my uneasiness because he became even more determined to convince me.

  “Don’t you get it? The caviar guys, they’re part of an international society. Like the Mafia, only they keep it quiet. Sooner or later, they’ll have to attack the lodge because that’s where the goddamn food is. It could be weeks before the mainland gets power again. And who cares about a few people stranded on an island?”

  From four miles away, I was looking at the concrete glow of Bare Key Casino reflecting off the stars, and wondering, How can anyone be so oblivious? I felt like head-butting the guy, then strangling him with my legs.

  I stayed calm, though, and played along, “Everyone will be out of food and water in a few days? That settles it, then. We’ve got to get inside that lodge. Cut our hands free, we can move faster and quieter. What happens when a women trips but can’t use her hands? She screams. She’d give away our position. After that, we take off for the back of the lodge, everyone at the same time. Doing the unexpected is the best way to deal with the unexpected.”

  I struggled to my knees and turned my back to Trapper. “My arms are numb, cut the damn tape. And don’t get too attached to that knife—it’s mine.”

  Kahn was suggestible, but he had his limits. “Okay, okay… cut Dragonfly free, yeah—but not him! We’ve got enough to worry about without Ford trying to jump us.”

  I said, “If you want my help, you will. How long you think that sniper’s going to wait?”

  Kahn replied, “Nope. No way,” sounding like a petulant child.

  My fingers were cramping, mosquitoes were like cobwebs on my face and I was out of patience. “For all you know, the shots we just heard was the Neinabors killing a couple of unarmed people. All because you went off, left them unprotected, while you tried to take down a sick old man. For once, show some balls.”

  As Trapper freed Umeko’s hands, maybe he sensed the power shifting because he told me, “We haven’t seen the twins for, like, almost an hour. You’re right about those two. They grabbed their guns, went out the door, and that’s when the fireworks really started.”

  “Did one of the weapons have a red laser sight?”

  I wasn’t sure if Trapper nodded or not. “Maybe. They’re the ones who found the guns, so they got first choice.”

  I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard. “Found guns where?”

  “When the Internet crashed, they said it was the sign they were waiting for. From the Bible, you know? So they went floor to floor, ripping everything apart, and found this little closet where someone had hidden weapons. This rifle”—Trapper held it for me to see—“three pistols and three boxes of ammunition.”

  I said, “In a fishing lodge?” then dragged my left foot under me because, in that instant, I realized what was going on. The Neinabor twins had orchestrated the entire hijacking. They hadn’t found weapons. They had brought weapons to Florida in their van—probably along with a homemade bomb, or bombs, plus a portable radio jammer.

  I’d been right about Kahn and Trapper—they didn’t know a damn thing. Kahn had been telling the truth when he said events had snowballed when everyone panicked. The Neinabors had kept the plan a secret because they wanted to convince their Third Planet friends that Armageddon had arrived. “They’re very smart,” Trapper had told us—and also so mentally unstable that they conversed with a dead brother.

  Kahn, getting angry now, said, “You still don’t get it, do you? These guns really are a sign, man. The End Times, it’s more than just bullshit prophecy. The Earth is always renewing herself. Hurricanes, tornadoes—but now the real shitstorm is here. You don’t think she knows how to protect herself?”

  “Shut up,” I told him.

  “What?”

  “You heard me.” I got another foot under me and stood. “I’m going inside. Maybe Tomlinson and I—if he’s still alive—can think of a way to convince the caviar people you idiots started shooting because you panicked. In the morning, though, it’s going to be a lot harder to explain to the police, Coast Guard, ATF and everyone else who shows up.”

  Kahn hissed, “Get down!” motioning toward the darkness. “You trying to get us all killed?”

  I was staring at Kahn. He looked like a frat boy dressed for Halloween, with his ski mask and pistol. He wasn’t going to shoot anyone. I walked toward Umeko. “Maybe you should stay with these two. If there’s any more shooting, you can at least count on them to find a place to hide.”

  The woman was shaking her head before I finished the sentence, stood, brushed her hands on her slacks, told me, “Let’s go, we’d better hurry.”

  We did.

  Ignoring Kahn’s threats, we ran across the croquet court to the lodge, where I followed Umeko into the main room. There, instead of waiting for her to finish untangling the tape that bound my elbows and wrists, I yelled, “Tomlinson! Get your ass in here!” because I was furious.

  We didn’t have to wait long. We heard footsteps, then a short man, pudgy but not obese, dragged Tomlinson into the room, left hand knotted in his long hair, right hand holding a pistol that cast a familiar red dot on my friend’s throat.

  Sounding disgusted with himself, Tomlinson told me, “I picked up on the vibe too late, Doc. Sorry, man. Thought I could warn you later, but the whole mess just spun out of control.”

  Tomlinson’s hands were bound behind his back, his left eye was swollen closed and there was blood around his mouth. But he still managed to force a fake smile as his eyes warned me He’s insane. Be careful—he’ll kill us all.

  No, Tomlinson was warning me about both Neinabors. Because just then the second brother appeared, a half-moon grin on his face, head bouncing to the heavy metal cadence of his earbuds.

  With a wave of his pistol, he ordered us into the next room.

  15

  Because he was listening to his iPod, the twin doing most of the talking yelled when he spoke as if everyone in the room was deafened by the music reverberating through his skull. He yelled at Umeko now, saying, “Which one you want me to offer up first? It doesn’t matter to me. The blood’s on your hands. Hey, Geness, what’s Abraham say?”

  Offer. A euphemism for “murder,” but with religious overtones because Odus Neinabor was swinging his pistol at the women who had come to Vanderbilt Island for a girls’ weekend but had stumbled into a nightmare. And Abraham—that must be the dead triplet. Did that mean that Odus could not speak to him directly, only Geness? Interesting.

  The twins must have returned to the lodge soon after Kahn and Trapper had left, from what I saw. It would have taken them at least half an hour to do all that they had done. And they’d done a lot—some of it absurd, all of it cruel. The way they were treating the three most harmless people in the room was an example.

  The women were still in their tropical party dresses, like three wilting bouquets sitting with their backs to the wall, their faces clown-streaked with eyeliner because they had been crying. The abuse had been going on for a while. The twins had wired the ladies’ hands behind their backs, then tossed their designer shoes into a pile in the middle of the room as if in preface to playing some weird party game.

  I knew one of the women by name, Sharon Farwell. She was a successful restaurateur, an over-forty beauty who was business hardened but now displayed symptoms of shock because of what was happening. Her eyes had brightened when I entered the room. But then when she saw that my arms were taped behind me, her chin sank toward the floor.

  Pitiless. That described what the twins had done. There was no way the women, or anyone, could have anticipated such crazed behavior.

  Odus was Exodus, a mean little bastard, according to Trapper. But the quiet one, Geness—Genesis—was the more dangerous of the two, in my estimation, because I’d be willing to bet he used the dead triplet, Abraham, to manipulate brotherly decisions and as a scapegoat for their viciousness.

  Genesis and Exodus, two biblical names given by
nomadic hipsters whose sons had lived a caravan life in the desert. The names had no sinister overtones so fit the twins perfectly—two brothers who were benign in appearance, even comical, which effectively disguised the truth that they were both dangerous.

  I’ve encountered killers, both amateurs and methodical pros, but there were only three true sociopaths among them. One was a brain-damaged mercenary who became infamous in Central America for hunting only at night, like a werewolf, then burning his victims alive.

  The man, known as Incendiario to the peasants of the Maya Mountains, was Praxcedes Lourdes. He had a grotesque physical presence that warned of the danger he represented. In a lesser way, the other two sociopaths were physically repugnant as well—a freak with an Oedipus fixation and a necromancer witch who believed she was a succubus.

  Geness and Odus Neinabor, though, could have been the chubby, wholesome sidekicks in a TV sitcom. They were plump, rosy-cheeked, with wide mouths and weak jaws. Both had feminine qualities: balding, shoulder-length blond hair, breast tissue that bounced beneath their black crewnecks when they walked, delicate, stubby fingers.

  Odus was the talkative one, Geness, the introvert—normal for identical twins, normal in appearance. Normal in every way but for their behavior, and the wild glassy eyes that shielded them from reality rather than connecting them.

  Insulation and isolation—true sociopaths construct barriers as complex as any maze. Like the heavy-metal music that thrummed from Odus’s earbuds, loud enough to resonate through his eye sockets. Like the dead brother who spoke through Geness’s mouth.

  Aberrant behavior can be ascribed to many factors. What is impossible to explain, though, is the pleasure that sociopaths derive from inflicting pain on others. It is, in my experience, the defining behavioral deformity that links mutants with their monstrous behavior. I had met three sociopaths in my life. Now, though, I could count five. Odus and Geness, who took visible pleasure when they inflicted pain on people. Especially the three attractive middle-aged women from nearby Captiva Island.