The hours passed slowly, as you might expect. Once I left the Corps I never expected that I would be back in the field, experience that weird combination of “waiting for action” tingling and “bored beyond belief” ennui that always came ahead of combat for me. It's the waiting that wears on you, in the field. When action comes, it's too quick to think about; you either do as your training taught you and your instincts demand and get through it or, like me, you make some idiot mistake and get hit. It's not fun.
I'd be lying if I told you that, in those hours of waiting for the kidnapper to finally come, I was perfectly calm and collected. I wasn't. The day's scouting and chase had brought up way too many old memories and feelings, many of them not very pretty. Meaning to say that, when you think about your ninth birthday and the chocolate cake you got and how good it tasted, you generally get the feelings, impressions, thoughts, and images all bundled together in a more-or-less coherent whole. But when you've been through some traumatic shit, some of that stuff gets—as the docs say—disassociated. And in my case, there were a whole lot of memories that were pretty unpleasant, and somehow my limbic system had connected them, willy-nilly, to my current adrenaline overdose, and my brain had decided to dump them into me every which way.
It's not the most pleasant way to spend several hours is what I mean, reliving emotions you experienced—terror, sorrow, fierce grinding rage—without the images to accompany them. Or with the images but at an emotional remove. Or to feel your body go into combat readiness overdrive just because you hear an elf go into one of those shelters downhill from you. I longed for one of those monstrous bong hits I had seen Jeffie take the previous night.
I tried to occupy myself with small tasks. I took off and stored my boonie cap; checked the edge on my knives probably 100 times or more; made sure my laces and straps were all tight; took a cautious leak off to the side of my hiding spot. But mostly, I just had to grit my teeth and get through it. I don't think the psychologist who treated me for PTSD would have been happy knowing how I was spending some of my college time, but I hoped he wouldn't have been too disappointed with how I was handling it, either.
Around 9PM, when I thought we might be getting closer to Tosh pulling whatever maneuver he had planned, I moved closer to the road up to Crown and tried to find a good spot to hide. I guessed the kidnapper wouldn't park along the road, so he would be coming down from the Crown parking lot somewhere, if he could. And I needed to be close enough to the road to catch Baby's red Prelude go by.
Around 10:30 I heard the roar of an engine coming up the road, the first one in a while. Looking out from my spot I saw that, yes, it was indeed the red Prelude. I couldn't see much of the woman behind the wheel other than she had blonde hair. She turned into Crown circle and just as she passed out of sight another car, a nondescript gray Chevy station wagon, came up behind her. I noted with interest that the rear windows of the wagon were heavily tinted—something pretty unusual in the early 80s. Like with Prelude, I couldn't get much of a look at the man behind the wheel, even through my binoculars. I hoped that I'd get a closer look soon enough.
I moved quickly to the north, back in the direction of the fire trails, so that I could get a better look at the two cars. The Prelude circled around through the metered spaces but didn't stop—I couldn't see why. The station wagon pulled in and around, and then went down the spur that led to the delivery bay for the dining hall. If that was the kidnapper, it was a smart move; he probably wasn't going to be there long, and if he was dragging someone with him, it was a dark and isolated spot that late at night; no one would see him there.
But I was a bit baffled. Wasn't the car related to the bait? How would the kidnapper grab her if she was going away? But I trusted Tosh, and waited. And I was almost startled out of my shoes when I saw the man come out of the loading bay area, walking quickly directly towards me. I backed rapidly into the woods and uphill, away from the guy. He looked both ways, then jogged across the street, into the woods, and then headed straight for where Smith had cached the equipment. I flanked him uphill, trying to keep him close enough without giving away my position. He was clearly going after Baby—or whoever the hell Tosh had gotten to drive the car. But that wasn't my worry; my mission was the man himself, not the bait.
Almost directly to my right, across the rope-swing ravine, I saw a flicker of light in the area where I was pretty sure the decrepit elf shelter lay with the weapons; our man, no doubt, recovering the tools of his trade. I moved to the base of the ravine and hid behind a tree, waiting. I heard a few mechanical clicks, and then a few moments later saw a dim figure moving rapidly down hill towards the road. I followed closely behind.
I hesitated as I came to the edge of the woods but I needn't have worried; he was already across the street and heading down the path, and then turning right onto the stairs that led down to the BayTree parking lot. As soon as he turned the corner I dashed after him, running as quietly as I could. Just short of the stairs, I slid into the trees on the uphill side, and peeked around a bush down the stairway.
Our man reached the bottom of the stairs, stopped, and then turned off the path to the left. Reaching quickly into my pack I pulled out my sweatshirt, pulled it over my chamo top and, hoping I looked enough like a student to not arouse any suspicions, walked openly down the stairs myself. At the foot of the stairs I turned right, as if going into the quarry, and then quickly slid into the trees and made my way silently opposite to the spot where our man had disappeared, hoping that I hadn't screwed the pooch.
I had no sooner gotten myself situated when walking toward us came a rather tall, blonde woman carrying a purse. She had evidently parked in the Bay Tree lot, and was heading back up the hill toward Crown. I cursed and readied myself; this wasn't going to be pretty.
The woman walked past, her face shadowed by her hair and a rather large pair of glasses—she was really tall, easily my height, and slender (but not model-skinny). Moments after she passed, the man came out of the trees and followed several steps behind her. The woman—it obviously wasn’t Baby, who was short and buxom (though not as much as Sara in either category), not tall and slender—did not appear to notice and continue walking up the steps. I fell in a few steps behind.
About halfway up, she paused with a curse and bent down, as if to fix a strap on her shoe or some such, one hand in her purse. The man moved quickly up the steps towards her, but before he could quite reach her she had spun around, some kind of stick in her hand that glinted in the light and, almost quicker than I could see, smashed the man on the wrist. Something bright and brass-colored dropped to the ground with a metallic clatter while the man yowled with pain as he grabbed his wrist, and then growled with anger. The woman, to my considerable surprise, yelled out in Tosh's voice, “Now, Zack!” and spun and kicked out at the man's chest, hitting him right in the diaphragm, it looked like.
I had broken into a run at Tosh's call and arrived just in time to take the full weight of our quarry in my midsection. I grabbed him, tucked, and rolled, letting him take the force of the fall. He didn't make any sound as he hit—I guessed that Tosh's kick had been on target—but struggled mightily. Tosh came up with a quick bound, grabbed the wrist he had just whacked, and snapped on a cuff. Grunting with effort, I got our man in a half-nelson, handing his other wrist to Tosh to finish restraining him. He started struggling worse than ever until Tosh shoved the “stick” up under his nose and I saw it was one of his sai.
“I wouldn't,” said Tosh, in an angry and serious voice that I had never heard before.
“This is assault!” the man yelled.
“Yes, it is,” Tosh said. “But as you're a kidnapper and a murder suspect, and the police have been trying to find you for nearly two years, I don't think you're going to have much luck pressing charges.”
“I don't know what the hell you're talking about!”
“Right. You were just on a nice evening walk, carrying an illegal weapon stolen from Army Special Forces, and happened to trip and fall on a woman by accident after hiding in the bushes and waiting for her to walk by.” Tosh stood up, keeping the sai out where the man could see it, and standing in a way that made it clear he was ready to strike if our man so much as wriggled wrong. “Now, do you want to find out how well I can use this, and how much pain my friend Zack here can inflict on a handcuffed man . . .”
“Can I please?” I said, interrupting.
A tiny smile flickered across Tosh's face and vanished almost instantly. “Not if he behaves.” He looked at our prisoner. “Well?” The wind went out of him and he slumped back into my arms helplessly.
“That's better,” said Tosh. “Now Zack, if you don't mind, get the keys out of his pockets; I'd much rather toss him in the back of his own damn station wagon to drive him to Greg at the police department.” Another quick smile; “I don't really want to spend time stuffing him in the back of that Prelude. And I don't think it would make Baby happy, anyway.”
“What about Sharona, Tosh?” I said.
He nodded. ”After we toss this guy in the car, I'll make a quick call to Greg and tell him where to pick her up.”
I put my impatience on hold and nodded. I twisted our prisoner's arm up and behind him to encourage him to his feet, and started leading him up the stairs and towards his car. “I'm guessing you're eventually going to tell me who this guy is and how you figured this all out, right?”
Tosh smiled. ”Definitely. But phone call first.”