North Korean Blowup (32 page)

“Yes.” Foster was surprised he could say the word.

“Lock your car?”

“No.” Foster realized he still had the keys in his hand. He gave them to the man who locked the driver’s side door and put the keys in Foster’s pocket.

“All right now, son. You just lean on me and you and me are gonna get you down to the clinic. Just a half block. Get there bout when they open.”

The man put his arm around Foster and urged him forward. Every step was an adventure. Why wouldn’t his legs work right? He gritted teeth and made his feet move the correct direction.

Ten minutes later they came to the clinic. Shirley had just arrived and when she saw Foster she ran up to him, tears splashing down her face.

“What in the world? No, don’t talk. Let’s get him inside. Thank you, sir for helping him. He’s been here all night?”

“In his car, half a block up. Who would do this?”

“Who? Long John Garrison and I’m calling the police.”

Foster shook his head. “No. No police.” She looked at him curiously, then nodded and pushed open the clinic door.

Later Dr. Claremont shook his head. “Foster, you have a smashed nose, two black eyes and some bad bruises on your belly, but outside of that, you look like you’ll live.”

“My nose?”

“I’ll straighten it up and put in some pillows to keep it straight until it heals. You’ll do a lot of breathing through your mouth. No teeth missing, your eyes aren’t damaged. Long John Garrison and three or four of his home boys?”

Foster nodded.

“I’ll be glad to file a police report. Trouble is it was at night and you have no witnesses. He’ll have six guys who swear that they went to the movies with him or to a ball game.”

“No police. My problem.”

That afternoon, Dr. Claremont had straightened out his nose and given him enough pain pills to dull everything in the room to a gentle whisper. He lay on a cot in the storage room. Shirley came in every ten minutes to check on him.

“Damn him,” she said softly. “I wish now that I had killed that sonofabitch when I shot at him.” Foster heard her and tried to smile but his face didn’t work right.

He stayed in the clinic that night. Shirley was there with him until ten o’clock when she gave him a sleeping pill. When she was sure he was sleeping, she slipped out and went home less than five miles away.

She was back at eight the next morning. She found Foster sitting up on the cot.

“Hey, what’s with you?”

“Figure I should pay my way here.”

“We’ll talk about that. First breakfast.” She brought him take out pancakes, syrup, sausages, two cups of coffee, and an apple turnover. At first he didn’t think he could eat. Then he did and discovered he was starved. He ate everything she brought.

Shirley made him walk around the clinic. He found he could navigate quite well. His belly still hurt and his nose was a constant pain, but he was alive. Long John could have stomped him to death last night with a few well placed kicks to his head.

At noon they walked to the deli and shared a sandwich. That afternoon he handled the front desk. And told those who asked that he was a walking advertisement with his bandaged nose for the work of the clinic.

They finished work early that night, only seven thirty.

“I’m going to drive back to the barracks,” Foster told Shirley. “Something I have to do.”

“You’re not driving an inch until I give you a driving test,” She said. She stood beside him and watched critically as he stepped inside the car, closed the door and started the engine. She hurried around to the passenger’s side and slid inside. He pulled out safely and drove down the block, around two more and stopped at her car half a block down from the clinic.

“Did I pass inspector?”

“You did, but your reaction time is a bit slow. Be careful.” She hesitated. “You don’t have to go back. You could stay at my apartment. I have a couch I can sleep on and….”

He held up his hand. “Something I need to arrange at the barracks. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Drive safely.”

She reached over to kiss him but the bandage got in the way. They both laughed.

“Later,” he said. He touched her hand. “Something you can do for me. You know anybody in the Arlington Police department?”

“I know a clerk down there. He tried to date me for six months, finally gave up. Why?”

“I need Long John Garrison’s home address.”

“Wow.” You’re not letting him get off free, are you?  “Wow. Okay, I’ll see if I can get his home address. Something about his not paying a bill he owed us. I’ll think of something. He can get the address, if he will.”

“Flirt with him a little.”

She punched his shoulder gently. “I’ll get the address.”

When Foster drove into the Farm late that night, he found only three SEALs still in residence. The rest of them had taken their leaves and vanished. He woke up Rattigan, Gorman and Tram and told them he needed to talk to them in the head. In the lighted bathroom the three SEALs stared at his battered face.

“You been playing punching bag, boy?” Rattigan asked.

He explained to them what happened and the leading up events.

“Tomorrow I’m getting this bastard’s home address. I’d appreciate it if you would help me cook up some surprises for the kid, before somebody kills him and I can’t hurt him.”

“I can hang here another day,” Tran said. “We go in after dark?”

“Best time of day,” Rattigan said. “I’m in.”

Gorman scowled. “The little shit deserves something. What do you have in mind?”
          “Not much. If he has a car we trash it delightfully, maybe set it on fire. Maybe we strip him naked, tie his hands behind his back and put on a firm blindfold, and let him loose in a shopping mall somewhere. I’m open to ideas.”
          “The car is good, if he has one,” Tran said. “He live at home? We’ll have to get him out of the house.”

“He wear dreadlocks?” Rattigan asked. “If he does we shave his head. That would bum him out more than anything.”

“Love to break his legs, but the cops would have to investigate that,” Foster said. “Come on, guys, we need ideas to humiliate him but not really damage him.”

They worked on it half the night and came up with four ideas that looked like they would work. Then they sacked out.

The next morning, Rattigan drove Foster to work at the clinic.

“Meet you here at seven thirty,” Rattigan said. “We’ll have all the equipment and supplies that we need. Take it easy now at this clinic.”

Inside the clinic, Dr. Claremont examined his nose, cut down on the size of the bandage and pronounced him fit for duty. His headache had vanished. Shirley had brought a pair of large sunglasses with lightly tinted lenses. They would cover up most of the black eye bruises and cut down on comments from the patients.

Foster went back on the front desk and helped in back with patients when they got too busy. He loved it. Shirley fussed over him like a mother humming bird and he loved that, too. She gave him Long John’s address and worried it.

“Don’t do anything to him where he has witnesses. And be careful. If you hurt him, I mean really hurt him, the police are going to be all over it.”

“We’ve taken that into consideration with our plans.”

“We?”

“Three of my friends from the barracks. Now, don’t worry. We won’t kill him or anything like that. Humiliation is our goal.”

The day tore by and at seven that evening he told Shirley he had to leave early. He met the other three SEALs in Tran’s four door Buick parked down the block.

First they drove past Long John Garrison’s address. It was a ten unit apartment house. There were three cars sitting out front. They parked up the block and watched the cars. At eight o’clock they got lucky and Long John came out of the apartment house, vaulted into a ten year old Chevy convertible and drove off. They followed. He stopped at a neighborhood drug store and went inside. When he came out three of the SEALs were sitting in his car. Foster watched from the Buick.

“What the hell, motherfuckers? Get the shit out of my car.”

“Your car?” Tran asked. “No, this is my car. I just repossessed it for non payment.”

“You lie. I own these wheels free and clear. Get out of my car.”

“Tell you what, Long John. For three hundred we’ll get out of your wheels. Fair enough?”

“What? Me pay you? No way. How you know my name, man? I should call the cops.”

“Yeah, call them. Ask for Detective Jackson. I understand you already know him.”

“What the hell is this? How come you know me and about Jackson?”

“We’re just three white boys trying to make a living. How long you had those dreadlocks, boy?”

“Long time, now out. I’ll go get some friends and throw your white asses out of there.”

“No chance. You wouldn’t get twenty feet.”

Rattigan and Gorman eased out of the car and edged in behind Long John.

“Get in the car and we’ll go for a test drive. I never buy wheels without a test drive.”

“Ain’t for sale.

“Get in the car.”

Gorman and Rattigan advanced on the tall black and he shrugged and got in the passenger’s side front seat.

Tran grinned. “Hey Long John, you see the movie The Godfather? Remember how that spot you’re sitting in is the death seat? When the mobsters wanted to wipe out somebody, they took him for a ride and a guy in the back seat looped the steel wire over the guy and pulled, damn near cutting his head off.”

Long John reached for the door handle, but Rattigan clamped his hand down on the man’s shoulder pinning him in place.

They drove to a dark area where there were few houses, pulled to the curb, and stopped.

“Now, Long John,” Gorman said. “You just sit tight and this won’t hurt at all. Your dreadlocks are no more. Got me a pair of fine barber clippers and I’m gonna take you down to an eighth of an inch all the way over your ugly head.” He snapped on the clippers which gave off a loud buzzing and Long John jumped.

“Look, I can see paying you gentlemen the three hundred. No clippers and I get my wheel back, deal?”
          Gorman grabbed a pair of dreadlocks and buzzed them off and dropped them in Long John’s lap. Long John screamed. Gorman slapped him on the head with the clippers and he quieted.

Five minutes later the dreadlocks were all on Long John’s lap.

They helped him out of the car and bound his wrists behind his back with plastic riot cuffs.

“Understand you like to beat up on a man who’s being held by two goons,” Tran said.

Foster, who had followed them in the Buick came walking into the dim light swinging a baseball bat.

“Hear that you like to use a bat on helpless guys,” Foster said going up close so Long John knew who he was.

“Now look, guys. A big mistake. OK. I pounded this dude around a little, I never broke anything.”

“My nose. You broke my nose.” Foster swung his right fist out of the night and slammed it into Long John’s nose, crushing it as blood flew and Long John wailed in the darkness.

“Well, even Stephen on the nose job,” Foster said. He picked up a gallon can of gasoline and slashed half of it in the front seat and the rest in the back of the Chevy convertible. Then he took out a pack of cigarettes and shook out one.

“Think I’ll have myself a smoke. While I’m puffing away, Long John, want you to sit in the front seat of your wheels. Just kind of sit there and wonder when I’m going to flick my smoke into your gasoline fume bomb of a Chevy.”

They shoved Long John into the passenger seat and slammed the door.

“He don’t look right sitting there with those clothes on.” Rattigan said. “Hell, they might catch fire.”

“So we help him take off his clothes,” Foster said. They pulled the tall man out of the car and KA-BAR knives flashed. The three men sliced and tore the clothes off his body until he was naked. Then they forced Long John back into the passenger’s front seat of the car and closed the door.

The four SEALs stood beside the car. Now all four were smoking.

“Hey, give us the word, Foster,” Tran said. “We’ll see who can flip his smoke the farthest and get it inside the car.”

“That’s arson, you guys,” Long John pleaded. “The cops will get you for sure.”

“You won’t care, burned to a crisp Long John,” Foster said. “Hell, you won’t have to worry about anything ever again.”

“A thousand for each one of you,” Long John said pleading. “I’ve got some cash. A thousand up front and you dump those smokes and get me back to my place.”

“Not a chance you bastard,” Foster said. “You beat on me when two guys held me. I would have taken you alone baseball bat and everything. Now you see how it is. Okay, we won’t burn you up. Put out the smokes, guys. But we will leave you here until somebody comes along and helps you, or some cop arrests you. Just remember when you think you’re a tough dude, that us four are all tougher than you ever thought of being. If you ever show your face around that clinic again, or bother any of the people who work there, We four will hunt you down and peal the skin off your body inch by inch and you’ll beg us to kill you. Do I make my point, asshole?”

“Yes. Oh, god yes. I’ll never even drive past that clinic. Never again. Now, give me some clothes to wear.”

“Not a chance” Tran said. “Suffer some more. Your car keys?”
Tran tossed them to Foster. He took them and threw them as far as he could into a patch of trees and brush. “You’ll have to go find them out there somewhere. Your billfold is out there too. We didn’t even take the twenty dollars out of it. Good bye, tough guy. Before long you’ll have to decide if you want to wind up dead or in jail.”

The four SEALs turned and walked to the Buick and drove away. The last they saw of Long John he had the door open and was walking away from the car bomb as fast as he could, still naked as a new born babe. It had been a good mission.

CHAPTER THIRTY

The Farm, Virginia

Three weeks later, all but one small bandage had come off Foster’s nose. His black eyes had faded to white and he was back on duty with the President’s Platoon. They had just finished a rugged day of training that started with a twenty mile hike, then got serious.