Bayou Brigade Page 10

  Another uninhibited blast to the kidneys caught Slayton already off-balance; he moved headlong into the cheap sliding screen door, gravitating to the cement with a thud. He tried controlled muscle exercises to regain his breath (the Chinaman was coming after him, perhaps for a bone-crunching finale). The third-story balcony was no place for him now.

  Slayton mustered a burst of strength, pushing off with his legs, and propelled himself sideways into the hulking assassin. An audible grunt told Slayton the move had toppled the man.

  They both made a grab for Slayton’s coat, which contained the gun. Swinging into an arc, the Chinaman threw his arm into Slayton’s path. Coincidentally, Slayton duplicated the maneuver and they both rapped one another in the forehead. The Chinaman recovered first; Slayton looked up from the floor, seeing the man holding his coat. It flew into the corner, gun still holstered inside. The Chinaman smiled.

  “You want to dance, Attila?” Slayton spat out some blood from a cut and bruised lip.

  The man stood, shaking his head. “No gun, mister. You go through me to get it.”

  “It’ll be a pleasure.”

  The Chinaman lunged at Slayton, somewhat prematurely. Slayton rolled into the mattress, shoulder first, and came up near the pillows. A repeat of the same move was miscalculated, sending him onto the balcony again.

  “Die, Yankee!” yelled the aggressor, moving with arms outstretched.

  Slayton flipped over the railing, keeping his grip, hanging over the edge. Although a rampaging powerhouse of destruction, the Chinaman wasn’t too agile. He couldn’t stop in time, and Slayton did not mourn as the three-hundred-pound Oriental bounced over the side, belly-flopping onto the pavement below.

  Slayton counted two mouth cuts and a mild contusion over the left eye while reentering the room. A towel soaked in soapy water alleviated the bleeding. The Chinaman was still, a trickle of blood forming into a puddle behind his skull.

  “What happened to you?” screeched the diminutive, Olive Oyl-ish motel manager.

  “Got a Band-Aid?” inquired Slayton, pushing the towel against his head wound. “I fell down.”

  She ransacked the front desk area trying to locate the first aid kit. “In your room?”

  “Getting out of my car.”

  “You drunk?”

  “Just clumsy.”

  There was a rustling noise behind him.

  The manager screamed at the figure looming at the office entrance. The Chinaman, badly injured, red blood pouring from a split forehead, was steadying himself and raising a block of wood, a nail jutting out of one end.

  His first swing missed Slayton and destroyed a wide-frame postcard stand. The second try upset his equilibrium. He swiped at the air as he fell.

  Slayton jumped over the man, into a hallway lined with soft drink machines. The Chinaman was as a wounded animal, clawing frantically at nothing in particular and sniffing up blood through crushed nostrils. Another wide-angled swipe missed Slayton’s head by inches. The nail went into the alloy plating of a Coke dispenser, allowing Slayton a few seconds to retaliate.

  A blow to the shin, and the Chinaman cried in agony. Its force broke the ankle. Slayton stepped away as the wounded Chinaman continued prying the wooden block out of the machine. Slayton landed on the other leg, and the attacker hit the ground again. A well-placed judo chop broke more bones in the hulking man’s right arm. He was howling now, attracting the attention of residents, pedestrians, and even a couple of land-surfing kids.

  “Call the police,” an older woman said, clasping her hands.

  Slayton didn’t want to waste time explaining this activity to the cops. Snatching the wooden block, yanking it swiftly away from the metal, he turned to run. But the Chinaman wasn’t through yet. He caught Slayton’s leg and pulled him down. There was nothing else Slayton could do; he brought the weapon to bear on the man’s head. The nail sank into his brain.

  The onlookers reacted, hollering and running. Slayton didn’t look back. Police sirens wailed in the distance, closing in. Bounding up the stairs, limping to the room, he retrieved the coat and ran across a vacant lot behind the motel.

  No one dared follow him. Most of the witnesses scattered when the Chinaman’s post-mortem convulsions became unbearable to watch.

  Slayton sprinted through alleys and side roads, arriving out of breath at the La Grange Hotel. Wilma was not in her room. Although the head injury bled through the bandage, forming an ever-widening dark patch, Slayton searched room 409 despite the blood dripping into his eyes. Her suitcases were gone; all traces of her stay wiped out completely. The bed and bathroom had been cleaned; sheets were changed, even a white paper band had been looped around the toilet seat.

  The hallway outside the room was empty. Slayton closed the door softly. Turning to leave, he bumped into a mustachioed gentleman with a .22-caliber, poking him and motioning him back into the room.

  “Looking for the chickie?” the gunman asked. Motioning Slayton to the bed, he said, “Hands up,” reached in Slayton’s coat, and tossed the Smith & Wesson aside.

  “Don’t get anxious,” the man gibed, “we were just leaving. Let’s go.” He was too nervous with the trigger to allow Slayton much chance for escape.

  They exited the building through the rear, slipping into a waiting Ford Cortina. Two other men held Slayton while the nervous gunman searched for the Treasury identification card. It was in Slayton’s wallet. “This is our boy,” the man said.

  Slayton said nothing until the driver swerved onto Canal Street, aiming for the wharves. “It’s unlikely you guys would drop me into the river in broad daylight, so I must be on the way to a meeting.”

  “Shut up,” said the driver.

  The nervous gunman twitched. “I don’t think you’ll like where you’re going,” he laughed.

  New Orleans’ Irish Channel was, in the 1960s, an overflowing melting pot of low-life criminal trash, rapists, poverty-stricken and desperate people hemmed in by economic adversity. Redevelopment of some buildings raised the standard of living in the Channel, but not by any noticeable degree. The crime rate dropped, though, leaving the area free of murderers and thieves. Street violence was exchanged for inactivity, and the Irish Channel became a lifeless urban no man’s land.

  The Cortina putted along, bouncing over railroad tracks, into the heart of the Channel section. A multistory office complex, still in skeletal form, enlivened the otherwise dead industrial neighborhood. Construction workers pounded and riveted, drowning the windy silence in a cacophony of hammering.

  The car stopped near an abandoned paint factory at the far end of the dock, beyond the vision of any construction laborer down the street.

  Slayton was led at gunpoint to a shack facing the water. The men in the front seat had remained with the car; the nervous gunman’s pistol irritated Slayton’s aching back muscles.

  Noticing a bright incandescent light through the dirt-smeared shack window, Slayton remarked, “Is this the Boy Scout’s meeting?”

  The gunman snorted back, “Be a good little Scout and shut the fuck up.”

  “Do you work for Bathurst?”

  “Get in!” The gunman pushed him through the front door, which had no handle or knob.

  Crashing into the shack, practically demolishing the rickety door in the process, Slayton was eating dust on the floor. This had once been a tool shed; now it had just a dozen or so empty shelves, filled with layers of settled dirt and grime.

  A deep, accented voice told the nervous gunman to remain outside the door. Slayton raised himself up. One man stood leaning against the rear wall, chewing gum. The other, motioning the gunman away and closing the door, was young, blond, with high-cheeked European features. Both of them wore commando uniforms.

  “Mr. Slayton,” the European said, “you have been invited to stay a day or two in the bayou.”

  “Do I reserve the right to cancel my reservation?” Slayton balanced on one leg, knee bent.

  “Don’t be foolish. Y
ou were planning to visit anyway.” “I’d rather have my travel agent take care of it.” “Come now, Slayton, you’re much too droll.”

  The gum-chewer snickered. Slayton’s eye darted, panning the room, looking for something to aid in his defense.

  “My name is Karl Baal,” said the European. “My friend is Merriott. Ever heard of us?”

  “Are you listed with Dun and Bradstreet?”

  “Take him.” Baal signaled to Merriott, who twisted Slayton’s arms around back. “We’ve heard of you, Mr. Slayton. We know you’ve been looking for us.” Then to his partner, “Step on his feet; hold them down.”

  Slayton was unable to move; Merriott’s grip pinned him standing up.

  Baal swung a punch into Slayton’s gut. “You screw around with us, Slayton, you might not come out in one piece.”

  Five more minutes of brutalizing left Slayton rolling and suffering on the baseboard. Baal had finished early—his orders were to take Slayton alive. He and Merriott bundled Slayton into a station wagon parked behind the shack. The occupants of the Ford Cortina were told to return downtown. Slayton later recalled Baal having told them to “tell Lucius and Alan to burn the reporter.” Who, Wilma? Slayton was too numb from pain even to consider what it meant.

  The station wagon, driven by Merriott, stopped on a dirt road at the edge of a swamp. Baal loaded Slayton into a small dinghy, and all three headed deeper into the cypress-covered tributaries of the bayou. Slayton was barely awake, although he understood that Baal had saved him for whatever horrors were waiting until the end of the river journey.

  A breeze shifted through the green timber, sunlight dancing on Slayton’s exposed face. Water rippled in the boat’s wake. Migratory birds settled in the leaves. Feigning sleep, Ben Slayton turned his attention inward, to his battered, knotted body. As Merriott silently rowed and Baal steered, the T-man’s concentration overcame the pain in gradual stages, motionlessly preparing for whatever physical agility and cunning would be needed later.

  After a while, he smiled. The pain was almost completely gone from his mind.

  An airplane had been chartered, all the preparations made, and Wilma was nowhere to be found. The hotel confirmed that she hadn’t checked out early; a call placed to the Post in Washington turned up nothing (except a worried editor—Daughton insisted he be informed as soon as she was found). Eddie Crosby carried on the daily business as usual, occasionally phoning La Grange to see whether she’d shown up yet. Wilma had a mind of her own, he conceded, which opened the possibility that another lead was being checked out and that he’d surely hear from her by day’s end.

  “A good excuse to stay late,” he muttered, looking on as Elva June wiggled out of her dress.

  Their on-the-job sex life had become more frantic in the last few days. Elva June’s husband had jetted to Miami for the annual vacuum cleaner salesman convention, so her insatiable appetite required frequent attention. Eddie was eager every time, angrily pumping and thrusting into her quivering, sensuous body, while she tensed with each forward motion.

  Entwined, legs and arms flailing and tightening in alternate rhythms, they made love standing up, lying down, or sitting, her legs beating against his back, their voices begging for release, climax after climax.

  Elva June found Eddie to be a tireless sexual athlete, giving her more just at the time hubby usually broke off after one of his daily wham-barn specials. Her torso un-’ dulated beneath Eddie’s, rotating to the beat of free, loving passion.

  The ’57 Chevy blew past the news service parking lot, charging onto the sidewalk and terrifying people standing in line at a nearby bus stop. A heavy object launched from inside the speeding auto shattered the office window glass; the car bumped over the curb again and rounded the curve at the next intersection.

  “Come on baby, don’t stop.” Elva June sighed as Eddie responded to the noise of glass spraying.

  “Wait a minute,” he said, pulling off her and putting on his pants.

  “I’m not a robot,” she whined. “I can’t just start up whenever you want to!”

  “Keep your fits on,” he teased.

  Before he turned the doorknob, there was a white flash, and both of them vaporized. The bomb took the roof and sent it spiraling thirty feet in the air, dislodging the A-frame ceiling support so it collapsed inward as it fell to earth. Pedestrians ran for cover in a rain of debris.

  When the rubble settled, all that remained of Eddie and Elva June were a forged iron belt buckle and a few charred bones.

  11

  The Brigade compound spread over what had been a sugar cane farm, bordered on all sides by a thick-packed circle of bayou waterways. Only two navigable arteries fed into the camp: one snaked two miles under low-hanging vegetation to an airstrip; the other led to a dirt road which, in turn, fed into the main highway to Morgan City.

  Its wooden frame jutted dramatically from marshy pools and brief, islandlike ground surfaces. Full logs were stood on end, as in the design of many nineteenth-century Army fortresses in the prairie states, topped with overhanging foliage and large planks. It was composed of three separate buildings, housing just over a hundred and fifty men, all active terrorist revolutionaries.

  Half the camp’s population had built the structures over a six-month period. The training ground and tactical range covered five-sixths of the open area—the mildly rolling delta land was infinitely preferable to the original headquarters in the Chaidamupendi region of western China.

  Baal’s boat arrived at the south dock, welcomed by two sentries guarding the water entrance. Merriott slapped Slayton on the face, splashing him with water, and all three disembarked.

  Baal walked the groggy but functional Slayton to a small building wedged between larger dormitories and offices. He locked Slayton into a dimly lit room, remarking, “Here you will be interrogated.”

  “Karl, you may go.” The voice came from the dark, a large shadow in one corner. It was stern, forceful, and Baal left Slayton’s side, exiting through another entrance on the opposite wall.

  The voice continued, “Mr. Slayton, we have met before.”

  Slayton bent a little at the knees; he was weak, and had been without water for hours. “Can’t see you,” he said.

  “Everything in this room is pitch black except for you, Slayton. The light is directly above you. From where I stand, all I can see is you. There could be ten others in here with me, and you’d never know, as long as the lights were out.”

  “Is there some significance to what you’re saying?”

  “Of course, of course. It’s a matter of opening your mind and turning on the light. You are looking right at me, or us, as the case may be, yet you cannot see us.”

  “The light isn’t on. How can I see?”

  “Your world is as you are now. It asks questions—`Can I see if I turn on the light?’ but does not wish to find the light switch. It sees nothing but darkness all around it; however, there are others standing all about, which it cannot see.”

  “I fail to see—”

  The voice cut him off. “You must find the light switch.” Shuffling in the dark, bumping against a wall, Slayton groped for the switch. It was a circular dimming control, and the lights went up slowly.

  A single man stood in full commando regalia, including a few U.S. Army medals pinned to the jacket lapel.

  Slayton strained his eyes, staring at the face. It was familiar. “You’re Bathurst. David Bathurst.”

  “Slayton,” Bathurst said, “don’t be so shocked. You must have had some idea.”

  “I was sure I’d be meeting a different Bathurst. You were reported missing in action.”

  “So were twenty or thirty others here at camp. It was not easy to amass the resources to come home, as it were, to the great United States. But here we are, and here I am.”

  “Are you in… charge?”

  “I am an officer of some high ranking. Not all executive personnel have arrived from the Orient. But within a few months
we shall all be assembled.”

  “The Brigade was real!”

  “The Brigade is a reality, Ben. You saw the magnificence of this swamp preserve. You’ve no doubt witnessed our incredible abilities.”

  “The ability to maim and destroy; yes, I’ve seen and felt it.”

  “To restructure a society always first involves tearing down the old, antiquated structure. Throughout mankind’s history, violence has been the only way to accomplish change.”

  “And to bring me here you had to have me beaten?”

  Bathurst shrugged and paced the floor, removing a cigarette from a laminated gold case. “Want a smoke? No? Suit yourself.” A match touched tobacco; its smell permeated the air. “I ask one of my men to pick you up, I do not instruct them on how to accomplish their task. You must remember, a few of these soldiers are…”

  “Psychos?”

  Shifting his sturdy five-foot-five frame, Bathurst cracked his knuckles. “It is necessary to train combat troops for the revolution.”

  “And you are the king of the insurrection? David, whatever happened to the idealistic law student who wanted to finish school when the war was over?”

  “That was too long ago for me to remember. I vaguely recall my naivete, suffering, and boredom. My life was destined to failure. I would have been swallowed up by the American dream and found no happiness, as I didn’t understand or appreciate true freedom.”

  “True freedom is an illusion.”

  “That is a realization only few of us surmount. I understand, as you do, that the systems do not serve us; the debacle of justice called free enterprise has failed. America is not containing the corruption within its borders. Other countries, peoples, cultures, cry out for recognition and rights and dignity. The American government suppresses and refuses dignity to hundreds of thousands of persons. If this country were indeed run by the people, its government wouldn’t be allowed to violate other peoples in the name of the almighty buck or military supremacy.”