Warren Murphy - Created, The Destroyer

A new Buick ambulance waited there with open doors. The attendants lifted the wheeled stretcher into the ambulance, then shut the vehicle's doors, whose windows were blacked out. The windows on the sides were also blackened. Inside, the dark-haired man who had stood by Haines in the control room threw a blanket off his lap as soon as the doors clicked shut. In his right hand, he held a hypodermic ready. With his left, he switched on an overhead light, then leaned over the body and ripped open the gray prison shirt. He felt carefully for the fifth rib, then sank the needle through the flesh into Remo's heart. Carefully, he pushed the plunger, slowly, evenly, until all the liquid was emptied into Remo's body.

He withdrew the needle, careful to keep it on its entry path.

When it was out of the body, he tossed it toward a corner, then reached up to the ceiling and pulled down an oxygen mask on a tube. He could hear the hissing of the oxygen which started pumping the moment the mask was removed from its brace on the ceiling.

He pressed the mask over Remo's still pale face, then waited, staring at his watch. After a minute, he pressed his ear to Remo's chest. Slowly, a smile formed on his lips.

He straightened up, removed the mask, replaced it in its bracket, made sure the oxygen was off, then tapped on the window behind the driver's head.

The ambulance's motors coughed and the big Buick was on its way.

About fifteen miles from the prison, the ambulance stopped at a side road. One of the attendants, who had exchanged his white garb for a civilian suit, got out of the front seat and went over to a parked car against whose fender a man with a hook for a left hand leaned, casually smoking a cigarette.

The hooked man flipped the keys to the attendant, dropped his cigarette, then trotted to the rear of the ambulance. He rapped on the door and in an even tone, said: "MacCleary."

The doors flung open and he stepped into the vehicle in one smooth motion, almost like a large cat darting into a cave.

The dark-haired man shut the doors. MacCleary shuffled rapidly to a seat beside the body, still motionless on the black leather of the stretcher. MacCleary turned to the other man and said, "Well?"

"We got a winner, Conn," the dark-haired man said. "I think we got a winner."

"Nobody wins in this outfit," the man with the hook said. "Nobody wins."

CHAPTER SIX

The air in the ambulance tasted shot through with oral laxatives as the ambulance rolled along. "Probably the high oxygen content," MacCleary thought to himself.

He concentrated on the man on the raised stretcher in the middle of the ambulance and rejoiced at every up-and-down motion of the large chest covered by the sheet. This was the man. He might be the answer.

"Turn on the lights," MacCleary said.

"You sure, Conn? I was told no lights."

"The lights," MacCleary repeated. "Just for a minute."

The dark-haired man moved an arm and suddenly the confinement was bathed in a bright yellow glow. MacCleary blinked and then focussed on the face, the high cheekbones, the closed eyes, the lids that hid the deep brown orbs, the smooth white skin, marked by only a faint scar on the chin.

MacCleary blinked and MacCleary stared. He stared at the biggest pot he had ever been in on. It had violated every rule he had ever been taught about all the eggs in one basket. It was the wrong solution, but it was the only solution.

And, if the breathing human body on the stretcher worked, a lot more would work. A lot more people would live in a land they loved. The greatest nation on earth might survive as it has been intended to survive. And it might all rest with the slumbering body with the closed eyelids, glinting a shade darker in the bright light than the man's normal skin. Those eyelids. MacCleary had seen them before. And the light had shone on them then, too.

Only, it had been the sunlight, the hot Vietnam sun and the Marine had been sleeping underneath the wooden skeleton of a gray tree.

MacCleary had been in the CIA then. Dressed in Army fatigues, he had hiked up a hill with two Marines as escorts.

It was a back and forth stalemate time of the war. In a few months, he would be home. But right now, MacCleary had an assignment.

In a small village within American lines, a Viet Cong had set up headquarters. CIA's objective: enter main communications house and capture records, a list of major Viet Cong sympathizers in Saigon.

If the farmhouse, pinpointed as communications center for the VC, were attacked in normal fashion with men inching forward, the Commies could burn their lists of contacts. CIA wanted the lists.

MacCleary had worked out a plan to have a full company of Marines stage a charge on the building, with no one seeking cover, almost a Kamikaze attack. This, MacCleary hoped, would be fast enough to deny the time for record burning or anything else.

The Marines gave him a company. But when he approached the captain in command of the unit, the captain just nodded to a tarpaulin-covered pile on which two Marines sat, their M-l's cradled in their arms.

"What's that?" MacCleary asked.

"Your records," the captain said casually. He was a small, thin man who managed to keep his uniform pressed even in combat conditions.

"But the assault? You weren't supposed to start it before I got here."

"We didn't need you," the captain said. "Take your records and get your ass out of here. We've done our job."

MacCleary started to say something, then turned and walked to the tarpaulin. After 20 minutes of leafing through heavy parchments with Chinese lettering, MacCleary smiled and nodded his respects to the Marine captain.

"I will make a report expressing CIA gratitude," he said.

"You do that," the captain said sullenly.

MacCleary glanced at the farmhouse. Its dried mud walls were free of bullet pockmarks.

"How'd you go in? With bayonets?"

The captain pushed up his helmet with his right hand and scratched the hair over his temple. "Yes and no."

"What do you mean?"

"We got this guy. He does these things."

"What things?"

"Like this farmhouse deal. He does them."

"What?"

"He goes in and he kills the people. We use him for single-man assaults on positions, night-time work. He, uh, just produces, that's all. It's a lot easier than running up casually lists."

"How does he do it?"

The captain shrugged. "I don't know. I never asked him. He just does it."

"I think he should get the Congressional Medal of Honor for this," MacCleary said.

"For what?" the captain asked. He looked confused.

"For getting these damn records by himself. For killing... how many men?"

"I think it was five in there." The captain still looked confused.

"For this and for killing five men."

"For that?"

"Certainly."

The captain shrugged his shoulders. "Williams does it all the time. I don't know what's so special about this time. If we make a big deal now, he'll be transferred out. Anyway, he doesn't like medals."

MacCleary stared at the captain, looking for the traces of a lie. There was none.

"Where is he?" MacCleary asked.

The captain nodded. "By that tree."

MacCleary saw that barrel chest in the crotch of the tree, a helmet pulled over a head. He glanced at the farmhouse, the bored captain and then back at the man under the tree.

"Keep a guard on those records," he said, then he walked slowly to the tree and stood over the sleeping Marine.

He kicked the helmet from the head with enough dexterity not to cause injury.

The Marine blinked, then lazily opened those eyelids.

"What's your name?" MacCleary asked.

"Who are you?"

"A major," MacCleary answered. He wore the leaves on his shoulders for convenience. He saw the Marine look at them.