MacDonald, John D – Travis McGee 18 – The Green Ripper

” 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.”

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