"You'll be better off just sitting right there," Brackin said. "Where are your pills?"
Sarge hung his head. "Back in the room. They rushed me over here. I didn't have a chance to get 'em. How did you know?"
Brackin smiled. "I'm a doctor. A neurologist. I've got lots of patients like you."
By then, Burke was standing at his side. "You crazy fool. You ought to be dead."
"I'll explain later," Brackin said. "We'd better get this guy tied up before his buddy returns."
They stuffed a handkerchief in his mouth so he couldn't alert Ted, then moved him into one of the chairs and started to tie him to it.
"How did you get loose?" Burke asked. "I thought that arm was disabled."
"It's not in too good a shape right now, especially since I fell on it when I clobbered our friend here. While I was in the chair, I kept working my fingers to keep them loose. One of my hobbies is magic. You know, sleight of hand. I put on magic shows at a children’s hospital on a regular basis.”
“Yeah, Lori told me.”
“With one hand mostly free, the rope was no challenge. And I wasn't taking the chance you thought when I rushed him."
"Why not?"
"He has Parkinson's Disease. Tremor in his hands and muscular rigidity made him unable to fire the gun. That service .45 takes a hefty trigger pull. I'd noticed marked bradykinesia and significant postural dysfunction."
"Hold it, doc! English, please."
Brackin flashed an apologetic grin. "Sorry. You may have noticed the way he moves slowly, with a flat-footed shuffle. There's no arm swing. He has difficulty with his hands. He couldn't untie the knot holding my arm. He's overdue for a dose of levodopa, which would give him a little better control. I was certain enough of the diagnosis to risk my neck on it."
Burke had one wrist tied, but Sarge wouldn't, or couldn't, keep the other one still. "Grab that arm for me, will you?" he asked Brackin.
Walt had been holding the gun in his left hand. He wasn't sure the right one could handle it. He laid it on the floor and held Sarge's arm.
Ted burst through the door, talking rapidly as he entered. "Hey, Sarge, I found your—"
His voice clipped off as he saw what was happening.
Burke was on one knee, behind and to the left of the chair. When he saw Ted's hand reach back, he knew there must be a holster on his belt. Burke grabbed for the .45 that lay on the floor beside him.
Ted drew his gun, firing off two quick rounds as he dropped into a crouch. The movement threw him off balance and foiled his aim. The first shot hit Sarge squarely in the chest, the second pulled farther to the right and caught Burke's left arm at the shoulder.
It wasn't enough to hobble Burke, who by now had raised the heavy automatic with both hands and squeezed off a shot. He would have preferred to disable the man, but he followed his training and targeted the center mass of the crouching figure. The bullet dropped Ted on the spot.
Burke jumped up and ran toward him, holding the pistol ready to fire again, the adrenalin pumping. He knew single shots rarely disabled an assailant, but then he saw the wound. The round had penetrated the front of Ted's skull and blown a large hole out the rear. He lay with his head outside the door, blood turning the brown sand beneath him a rusty red. The eyes were open, the shock still mirrored in their lifeless stare.
Burke felt a sudden tightness in his chest, almost as though Ted had punched his stomach again. He was still sore from the beating, but he knew that wasn't it. He had been involved in other shootouts during his FBI career, but he had never killed a man before. It wasn't a proud or pretty sight. But one thing was clear. If he hadn't been on target with that shot, the next one coming his way certainly would have been.
He looked back to see that Brackin had ripped off Sarge's shirt and was examining the wound. He walked over hesitantly.
The doctor glanced up, shaking his head. "It traveled on an angle, through the heart, apparently ruptured the aorta. A lot of dark, arterial blood. Nothing we can do for him." He stood up, looking sad and impotent. There was nothing more frustrating for a physician than to know that he lacked the means for saving a patient.
Burke stooped over the old soldier and frowned. A few days stubble of beard gave the dying cook a rough-hewn look. Burke wondered if he had served in World War II? He certainly hadn’t deserved this fate, though it resulted from giving his loyalty to the wrong crowd. Though the real goal of Jabberwock was still unclear, he now knew it involved a deadly plot.
When he realized that he still gripped Sarge’s old Army sidearm, Burke laid it carefully on the floor beside its owner. Now that they were alone on the island, they had no need for weapons, and he wasn’t interested in possibly getting caught on the mainland with somebody else’s handgun.
Brackin walked over, looking at Burke's left shoulder. "Get your shirt off and let me see that wound."
Burke hadn't noticed the blood on his shirt until then. He pulled it off and eyed the tear in the flesh. It didn’t appear serious.
"Let's go find a bathroom and clean it up," Brackin said, starting toward the door. He stopped when he came to the body lying across the threshold, bent down to stare at the wound. "Should we move him?"
Burke considered it a moment. "No, let's leave everything exactly as is." The gun with two shots fired lay beside the lifeless hand.
"Let them figure out what happened?"
"Exactly. I'll leave the .45 on the floor over there. I doubt they could separate my prints from Sarge’s. They wouldn’t bother with that anyway. There isn’t likely to be an investigation of this affair. Let them draw their own conclusions."
It would soon be five o'clock. Judging by Jeffries' report, Lori had evidently moved farther out as scheduled at four-fifteen. They still had an hour before she was to radio the Coast Guard. Finding a restroom in the office building with hot water, soap and a towel, Brackin washed the area on Burke's arm. He pulled a small first aid kit from a pocket of his fatigues, applied an antibiotic and bandaged the wound.
With the arm taken care of, they searched the office and turned up both pistols that had been taken from them after their capture, along with Burke's billfold. Burke also noticed a pad beside the telephone covered with scribbles, probably Ted's doodling while he talked. There was a phone number mixed in with the boxes and circles and arrows. It seemed vaguely familiar, but he had dealt with too many numbers lately. Through disuse, he supposed, he had lost some of his old facility for memorizing numbers and assorted unrelated facts. He tore a sheet from the pad and wrote down the phone number, along with the license number from the truck, which was still clearly etched in his brain.
Checking out the control panel beside the communications equipment, he found the switch that energized the electrical field for the perimeter security system. Apparently it had been turned on again after the boat left. The lights, however, were off. He switched the intrusion detectors off as well.
Outside, the rain had arrived, coming down in a steady shower. They scouted around the area and quickly found the raft behind the office building. Burke was a little surprised to see it intact. The only explanation he could come up with was that they had planned to leave it as evidence to explain the abandoned boat south of the island.
Brackin's arm had begun to give him more problems at the shoulder joint, while Burke's stomach and arm both made him grit his teeth as he began to exert himself. With some difficulty, they pulled the raft across the sand to the loading ramp, where the LCM had landed. One tugged, the other pushed, and they finally got it into the water, climbed in and started the motor. The rain had intensified, quickly soaking their clothing and bringing a real chill to the gusting wind. The storm, as such unpredictable phenomena are often driven to do, had arrived early.