The Bikini Break
III - Ridiculous Requirements
It’s been a long time. Three years, Gary thought. Three years since all they had to worry about was a week on a Pacific island. Three years since any of them slept soundly. Finally we can bring an end to this. As he and Gordon closed in on the lair, he reviewed the years of frustration, failure, and fear brought about by their target for tonight.
There had been no hint of destructiveness earlier in her life, but there had been some wrenching break in her past. Something ugly and violent happened. Whether she had been victim or perpetrator was not clear and no longer mattered. She had vanished into seclusion, and whatever poison infested her heart grew and darkened her spirit. She had reappeared, like so much that was evil, suddenly. She didn’t make demands or try to extort wealth or concessions. She simply destroyed and killed without an explanation or even a discernible reason.
The only ones who had even slowed her down had been the Rescue Rangers. And when, at last, they earned her special attention, the price they paid had been horrific. One by one, she hunted them down, each murder more grisly and torturous than the one before. The last of them, Foxglove Fabergé, had been reduced to running for her life. She was finally driven from hiding and snuffed out with grotesque cruelty. The deed had been done with such abandon, such delight, that it left behind the vital clue that had led Gary and his teams to her killer’s lair.
Gordon flashed a hand sign, and Gary barked the order. Detonations breached the walls of the building and four full strike teams poured in. Smoke, shouts, the THA-POK of Crosman guns filled the air. Her bodyguards, lobotomized semi-zombies, may have once been animals with families and futures. But all that had been lost with the destruction of their minds, and to Gary’s strike teams they were no more than targets.
Gary and Gordon found a barred steel door and slapped a shaped charge on it. There was no wasting time on precision. The charge shredded the door, its frame and the surrounding wall. Gordon rushed in first and slipped into a trap, its trapdoor caved in from the blast. He clung to the edge as his feet fought for purchase. Gary sidestepped the hole and drew a bead on their quarry, stunned by the blast, struggling to pull herself upright against a Frankenstein control panel across the room.
“Don’t give her a chance!” Gordon shouted. “Kill her!” But some tattered bit of faith in the goodness of the soul would not let Gary kill in cold blood. If she surrendered, perhaps even she was not beyond redemption.
“Don’t move, Hackwrench!” Gary shouted. “It’s all over!”
She spun on them, tousling the shock of shining blond hair. Her lips, which might have been attractive, were twisted in a hateful sneer. Her deep blue eyes, which might have been alluring, sparkled with malice. Her hand, which might have brought comfort and kindness, and had instead brought senseless death to thousands, edged toward the switch of the Holocaust Device.
“SHOOT!!” Gordon roared.
THA-POK! Gary felt the Crosman smack against his hand. He saw the dart impact in the middle of Hackwrench’s chest. He watched as her eyes widened in disbelief. She stumbled against the control panel and sagged down. As neural toxins raced through her body, perhaps her life flashed before her eyes. A life spent in the pursuit of mindless destruction and the spilling of innocent blood. Perhaps, at the last, there was remorse, or regret. Her face grew an expression of great sadness, almost to tears. She looked Gary in the eyes.
“Thanks,” said The Late Gadget Hackwrench. “I needed that.”
* * *
Gary awoke twisted in the bedclothes. For years, ever since the Zayante Creek incident, and it’s aftermath, his dreams had been exceptionally vivid. As it was said, “Better Than Life.” But it also meant his nightmares were worse than a weekend in Hades.
He rolled out of bed and sat on the edge, breathing deeply to push down the adrenalin that still coursed through his veins, his pajamas plastered to his fur with sweat. His hand still seemed to sting from firing the fatal shot, and he didn’t look at his palm, fearing he would see the checkering of the pistol grip engraved there.
There were pills in his medicine chest that would erase his consciousness well into the next day, but that was no solution. He knew he had to confront the demon in his mind, head-on. He got up and threw his saturated pajama top at the hamper and plodded heavily to the kitchen. At the door, he heard the soft tinka-tinka-tinka-tinka of a spoon stirring a cup. Guessing what he would find, he stepped in.
Gadget stood near the stovetop, wearing a dark blue bathrobe over her nightgown, stirring a cup of cocoa. She glanced up at him as he stepped in.
“Hi. I’m too keyed up to sleep, myself. I made enough for two. Want some?”
He didn’t answer. He just stood looking at her, creative instead of destructive, caring instead of hateful, untouched by evil instead of championing it. Somewhere in the past, by one step or many, she had arrived here instead of in the land of his nightmare. For him, the difference between what might have been, and what truly was, made him want to cry. He almost did. Gadget looked up and saw his expression. She went to him and grasped his arms.
“What’s wrong? Oh, gosh, you’re soaking wet! Sit down.”
She backed him toward a stool, but he pulled away and leaned heavily against the counter. “Are you ill? Should I wake up Gordon?”
“No. I’m not sick. I just had a bad dream.”
“This isn’t a bad dream,” Gadget said, “this is terror. What was it? You should try to talk it out.”
“I shouldn’t.”
“Weren’t you saying something today about not bottling up negative emotions? Or is it one of those classified things?” she asked, just a bit annoyed.
“It’s something... personal. And it involved you.”
Gadget let her gaze fall away, and considered her next words carefully. “Gary, I understand dreams don’t always reflect genuine desires. Just because you dream something doesn’t mean you want it to happen in reality.” She took a deep breath and plunged ahead. “Even if it’s something terribly intimate that ‘involved’ me, I won’t take it personally.”
He smiled faintly and put his hands on her shoulders. “It’s not what you’re thinking. It was... really bad. Violent.”
“It’s just a dream. Even if something violent happened, I still trust you. You don’t have to keep this inside. It’s important to get these things out of you. If you don’t tell the whole story, the nightmares keep coming back.”
“No, no. It’s... dang it, I guess I’d better tell you. I’m just making it sound worse.” He clearly didn’t want to begin. She took his hand and held it tightly.
“Then tell me about it,” she insisted. “Tell me all of it.”
He closed his eyes, the images in his mind tried to ward off his touch like an open wound that had to be cauterized. He took a breath, held the red-hot iron steady, and struck home.
“I dreamed that you had become twisted and hateful. You turned your inventions into weapons that killed thousands, just for entertainment. I dreamed that you murdered the other Rangers, in horrible ways. You... I mean, in my dream... you lured Chip out of Ranger Headquarters and cut him to tatters with a pair of knives, as if it were a grotesque dance. You set a trap for Zipper and doused him with DDT, and he died in convulsions, just like from nerve gas. You got the rest of the Rangers to track you to a manufacturing plant, and you played a trick to get Dale away from the others. You shoved him into the gears of a machine and he was crushed to death, with Monty and Foxglove watching.”
His eyes no longer focused when he opened them. The memory of the Dreamtime took hold. He rushed the telling of his story, forcing it to conclude as quickly as he could.
“I dreamed you were the one that brewed up that poisonous cheese wrapper. You killed Monterey Jack that way, and thousands of other rodents besides. It took us weeks to discover how you’d done it. Then we only stopped it by putting a toxic substance in the plastic. Our ‘solution’ killed a dozen humans. Four of them children. And Foxglove...” He almost couldn’t bring himself to tell the rest. “She ran for her life. She tried to hide from you, but you found her. You splashed her with an acid that dissolved her skin and she died in agony. Then you incinerated her body. That’s how we found you. The chemical you used had only one source. I had a strike force on call. We raided your hideout. I remember it like it was real. I wanted to give you a chance, to take you alive, but it was no good. I had to shoot... I killed you.”
She simply nodded, her eyes full of compassion. Somehow, it made Gary feel worse. He put his arms around her, almost unconsciously. She let him pull her close. His gliding cape fell gently around her shoulders, his fur downy-soft against her face. Without a thought, her arms went around his waist. For a moment, she found it was a very comfortable place to be.
“It’s all right, Gary. It was all just a dream. Sometimes dreams turn things upside-down and inside-out. It doesn’t have anything to do with who you really are.”
“It came out of me! How could I even imagine you doing such things? I can’t believe I could think such a thing about you, even in the darkest pit of my mind.”
“Ahem,” said Gordon, standing in the doorway. “Tete-a-tete’s should be carried out under the stars, or at least by firelight. The kitchen has too much calorie potential.”
Gadget pulled away from Gary. “That’s not what’s going on! Gary had a nightmare.”
“I heard that part.” Gordon held out a small blue pill to Gary, along with a glass of water. “Here. Take it and no arguments. You’ll still be fit to fly tomorrow if you take this, but you won’t get any rest, and we won’t have any peace, unless you do.”
Gary nodded and did as he was told. Gadget squeezed his hand. “Pleasant dreams,” she said.
“No dreams at all with this stuff,” Gary said. “That’s what it’s made for.” Then he went off to bed.
Gordon watched him disappear into his room, then turned to Gadget. “Did you say you had more of that cocoa?”
She regarded him suspiciously. “Yes, I did. Well before you came in. You were eavesdropping.”
He shrugged. “I’m tuned in to Gary. He’s been having trouble sleeping, and nightmares hit him harder than you or I. It has to do with something that happened before I met him. ”
“What could have happened to cause nightmares like this?”
“It’s something pretty personal for him. It’s his story, if he wants to tell it, not mine. Still, you should know what he’s like when this happens. He has the worst nightmares I’ve ever seen, or even read about. They’re more real to him than you and me standing here. One night, I heard him shouting at the top of his lungs. I went in his room and he was sitting up in bed, staring at a spot on the ceiling. He was so rigid I couldn’t move him an inch. He just kept shouting... pleading, really. Begging for - I don’t know what. He spoke a bunch of disjointed words that didn’t make any sense. Then he broke down crying. I never heard him cry so hard. After a few minutes, he calmed down and finally slept again.” Gordon took a slurp of the cocoa. “He was actually fast asleep the whole time. He didn’t even remember me being in his room, but he remembered that dream. He would never tell me what he was seeing that night. Or what he was trying to say.”
Gadget nodded, holding her cup as if its warmth would drive off the chill of Gordon’s tale. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so disturbed by a bad dream. And I’ve never seen Gary that disturbed by anything.” She thought for a moment. “Do you think he might be projecting his fears of his own capacity for violence onto an image of me, someone he cares about, then trying to kill that part of himself?”
“That’s pretty good analysis,” Gordon sat down his mug. “Maybe even accurate. But I suspect it’s simpler than that. My guess is he feels you’re too good to be true, so his subconscious is trying to cast a worst-case scenario to see if you fit it. Obviously, you don’t.”
“Me? Too good to be true?”
“Yes, you, Miss dream-girl Hackwrench.”
She smiled shyly. “Gary’s better at sweet talk.”
“He needs to be. He’s the ugly part of the team.”
She drank down the last of her cocoa. “Gordo, is there anything we can do to help him?”
“I think you’ve already done the most important thing that could be done. You accepted him at his worst and didn’t turn away. That’s the only reason he took that pill. He knows he didn’t frighten you, and you’ll still be with us in the morning.”
“I didn’t do anything special.”
“No, you are special. And I thank you. If for nothing else, for caring about my partner and my friend.”
“You don’t have to thank me. I’ve learned I need to care about others. And I need to feel needed, too. I was alone for so long that there isn’t much I won’t do for a friend.”
“You have a houseful of good friends! Not just the Rangers, but all those you’ve helped over the years. When were you ever lonely?”
Gadget didn’t answer at once. She went to the stove and refiled her cup, knowing this would not be a brief story.
“When my Dad died. That’s when I was really alone. We were living in the nose of an old B-25 at the Burbank airport. He was lost on a mercy flight to Africa, over the sea. I didn’t know what happened. He just didn’t come home, and I got more and more worried. Then one night I just knew - he was never coming home. I started crying, and I cried until my eyes ached. It was weeks before I got word of what happened. One of his friends who had been with him bailed out of the hospital in a waist-high cast to come and tell me. By then I was cried out. I had no more tears in me.
“His friends and flying buddies dropped by over the next few weeks. They all tried to comfort me, but they all had to leave sooner or later. After a while they stopped coming. I didn’t go anywhere, except to get food and parts for my work. I didn’t have anywhere to go, or any reason to.
“One night I went crazy. I took a hammer and smashed everything in the house. Then I spent all the next day putting everything back together again. And that night I smashed it all again. Then I put it all back together again. And then... I was just empty. It was like I had nothing inside me anymore.”
“I know,” Gordon said with a wistful smile. “I know exactly what you mean.”
Gadget waited a moment but Gordon didn’t seem willing to elaborate. Somehow, Gadget felt a powerful urge to continue. Telling him something very personal felt perfectly safe. This was a friend she wouldn’t see every day across the breakfast table.
“I’ve never told anyone what happened after that,” she said. “I guess word got around that there was a young female mouse living all alone. I started getting visits from ‘salesmen.’ You know all the jokes about the traveling salesmen? Well, these guys weren’t selling soap or household goods. Most of them were trying to sell me on them. I gave them all the brush off, except one. There was one fellow, an older squirrel, who was very kind and helped me around my home for a few days. He was in some dangerous business, like you two, and he showed me some defensive hand-to-hand moves. We’d talk about all kinds of things until late at night. I liked him a lot and I even asked him to stay... But he had to go, and he couldn’t take me with him, so I was alone again.
“Then one evening, one of those ‘salesman’ came calling. A big marmot. He wasn’t taking ‘no’ for an answer. He started pushing me around, then he grabbed me. He slapped me... He started tearing my clothes...”
Gordon winced and reached across to take her hand. He dreaded the story he was sure she was about to tell. Then he noticed the mischievous smile creeping across Gadget’s face.
“I clobbered that guy. I pounded him. Months of frustration and pain came out of my fists. I hit him with everything I had until I was almost too tired to lift my arms. I finally dumped him out a window. I was surprised he could even move, much less get up and run.
“It was only after he was gone that I got scared. I was too scared to go to bed. I curled up under a blanket in a corner, trying to hide. I imagined every sound was that guy coming back. I was afraid he’d bring others with him. I realized that if he’d been a little bit stronger, or a little faster, I would have lost that fight. I would have lost... everything.
“The next day I set up a trip wire to warn me if someone came into the plane. I rigged it with a sucker dart to slow them down and buy me some time. That was my first boobytrap. Setting traps became my full time project. I used anything I could find to throw at them. Arrows, daggers, hammers, darts, light bulbs. I propped up the barrel of a junked out machine gun just to look intimidating. I actually managed to winch a seven-hundred pound money safe into the overhead to make a deadfall. I must have installed two hundred sucker darts. I even built an armored assault walker out of colanders and kitchen utensils as a last defense. And I still didn’t feel safe.
“Finally, I put in the hatchet. That was the one that did it. I sharpened and polished it until it was like a razor, then I set it on a strong spring so it would hit hard. I triggered it for the first time with a stick, and it took the end of the stick off in an eyeblink. I thought, when this goes off, what do I do with the body?
“I stood there, staring, for a long time. I was in shock, or panic. I knew I couldn’t leave those boobytraps in place. I might kill someone who was just trying to get in to visit me. But if I took them out, I’d be defenseless. I almost gave up on everything. I couldn’t kill anyone, even to save myself. I was going disarm everything. I was going to just let them come, and let whatever happened to me happen.
“And that’s when I got an idea. Maybe I didn’t have to be afraid. Maybe I could scare them. I moved the trigger for the hatchet, then I walked up to it and stepped on it. The hatchet came down right behind of me. It scared me and I was expecting it. I re-rigged all the traps after that. If you walked or tried to sneak in, they’d either go off right in front of you or just as you passed. The sucker darts weren’t lethal, of course, and I left them aimed on target. The real trick was, if you went through everything at a dead run, they’d all trigger out of sequence and everything would miss. After that, I felt confident in my work. I could finally relax and work on other things. I was certain anyone brave enough or crazy enough to run through all those boobytraps would have to be a friend of my Dad. And that’s exactly who came through, a few months later. Monterey Jack caught a whiff of some cheese I’d left out, and he dragged Chip and Dale and Zipper right through it all. I was never so happy to see anyone in my life!”
“I’ll bet that was quite a reunion,” Gordon said. “Not seeing a friend for months, then they come in a bunch. Sounds like my family. I assume you made them feel welcome after the firepower exhibition?”
“I was a complete ditz!” she confessed. “I couldn’t even introduce myself properly! I didn’t have much furniture, so I started building chairs for them! Golly, I even asked Chip and Dale if they wanted to see my sprocket collection!”
“Wait a minute. You have a collection of sprockets?”
“NO!” Gadget laughed as she blushed bright pink. “That was a come-on! Just like ‘come see my etchings.’ I would have said anything to keep them from leaving. When they asked for Dad, my heart sank. But they weren’t there to pay him a visit. They needed a flight to Glacier Bay, so I volunteered. Then I crashed the Screaming Eagle on my first landing. I thought they wouldn’t want any more to do with me after that. But Chip... he came through. He boosted my confidence and got me back to work. I built the RangerPlane on the spot and we got out of there. We solved the case and set everything to rights again.
“When Chip and Dale asked me to stay with the Rescue Rangers, I didn’t care a patootie about my reputation or how it might look to anyone else. I didn’t care if everyone thought we were... you know. Sleeping together. I couldn’t stand the thought of being alone again.”
“You took charge of your life when you didn’t have anyone to help or support you. That’s not easy after a loss that great.”
“You did say you knew how I felt when Dad died,” she prompted.
“That’s true. I know it all too well. That awful emptiness. Like your insides were falling into a black hole and you were never going to make it back out. I know.”
“You made it sound just now like your family was alive.”
“They are. This was...” Gordon looked away. For a moment Gadget was sure he had gone shy on her. “I guess I should come clean. You see, I’ve been sailing under false colors with you, Gadget. I’m not really the devil-may-care bachelor I’ve led you to believe. A few years ago, I was married.”
“Gary said there were no married operators, ever.”
“I quit to marry her. Her name was Pamela. She was the prettiest gray squirrel who ever bounced off a branch and we were nuts about each other. Poor Gary never saw it coming. He never figured out why I was sneaking out, or where I was going. Not until I brought Pamela up here and introduced them, and said goodbye.”
“What happened? Where is she now?”
“We were happy for a year. Content. We were expecting our first child. I took her in to the hospital in plenty of time when she went into labor. But there were complications. Hemorrhaging. She went into shock and died. Our son only survived about an hour. I had to think up a name for him just for the grave marker.”
“I’m so sorry, Gordon! I didn’t mean to... I didn’t want to bring up painful memories.”
“It’s all right,” he said earnestly. “I’ve forgotten all the pain. When I think of Pamela now, I only remember the happiness we had. What I was driving at was, I know that emptiness you felt. I felt it, too. After the funeral, I wandered around our little treehouse apartment for, I guess, weeks. Then, one day, I realized I had to do the dishes.”
Gadget stared at him quizzically. That couldn’t be the end of the story, she thought. Then the light went on. “I knew there was a feminine touch here!” she exclaimed. “The dishes and things in the kitchen. They were hers!”
Gordon just nodded in agreement. “Of course, that wasn’t the first time I had done the dishes. But that’s when I understood that you still had to do the dishes. Robert Frost was right. Life goes on. Regardless of whether we’re all here or not, life goes on.”
“Pamela wouldn’t have wanted me to stop living just because she was gone. I went back into training and came back to work. I was teamed up with Gary again, and I’ve been here ever since.
“We’re all a part of a much greater story, Gadget. One day, the page turns and the story goes on. Perhaps the page turns and some of us aren’t a part of the story anymore. But the story goes on. We play our part, the page turns, and it could be what we’ve done is forgotten. But the story still goes on. We may only get one chance to make a difference, and if we play our parts well, to the best of our abilities, jolly well go-for-broke, then before the page turns we will make a difference. One that echoes through the whole story. And we’ll be remembered, too.”
Gadget rubbed her eyes for a moment, chasing away tears that wanted to become a flood. “You should have been a poet. Or a philosopher.”
“I’ve been both. Believe me, this line of work is much safer.” He glanced at the kitchen clock. “We should turn in. Gary’s not going to sleep late. That’s a very mild sedative I gave him, and we still have a long flight tomorrow.”
“Thanks for sharing the secrets, Gordon.”
“There are some things we haven’t spoken of as yet, but there are no real secrets among friends, Gadget. A friend is the one who replays the song in your heart when you’ve forgotten the words. It’s someone who knows the worst about you, and doesn’t care.”
She took the cocoa mugs to the sink. “Do I already know the worst about you two?”
“If you stay around us, you’ll learn.”
“If the worst is that you’re not super-rodents, I think I can handle it. G’night, Gordo.”
“Sleep well, Gadget.”
* * *