Mind Games

Chapter 55

See Chapter 1 for disclaimer

Don finally had maneuvered his way around to the far side of Charlie's legs, and had as clear a view as he was going to get of the man behind the tree. Straightening his arm, he aimed the gun at a position just above Charlie's head to shorten the movement he would need to make when he took his shot. He took a quick glance at Charlie, who had turned his face away and closed his eyes, silent tears running from them. The sight nearly broke Don's heart, but it was closely followed by a surge of hatred. The current was still buzzing in his brain, trying to provoke that hatred, and Don let it come, because it would make that much easier to kill the bastard who had started all of this…

In one smooth motion he brought the gun up, and as he did so he felt a fierce blow hit his upper arm a few inches above the elbow, and he jerked involuntarily just as he pulled the trigger. At nearly the same time, the man near the tree reacted to Don's movement, attempting to pull back out of range and twisting as Don's bullet entered his shoulder, trying to get off his own shot. The three shots were nearly simultaneous – the distant pop of Ian's rifle was masked by the quick crack-crack of the handguns. Don staggered as the searing bolt of fire tore through his arm, nearly going to his knees, but he didn't have time to register the pain – the man was running. He somehow managed to keep a grip on his gun and plunged into the tree line, tearing after the man, who had already disappeared into the fog.

He raced after him, rage burning hot in his throat, drowning out the pain in his arm. After a few hundred yards of pursuit through the mist, however, the pain finally asserted itself, and brought him back to reality. Charlie – Charlie was a sitting duck, lying there helpless in the clearing. In the fog, the man could double back around and go for him, head back to finish the job. That thought made Don whirl on his heels and sprint back in the other direction. He stopped almost as suddenly as a thought occurred to him - he had to get rid of the camera. He stripped off his jacket, wadded it in a ball so the camera eye was covered, and stuck it in a clump of brush. He paused for just a moment to take inventory of the wound in his arm. It was a nasty gash; and was bleeding freely. It needed to be wrapped, but he had nothing with which to wrap it, and besides there was no time. He dashed off back through the trees toward his brother.

The rifle cracked and Ian swore, then he quickly put his head down for another shot, but the mystery man had veered off into the brush with Don behind him. He rose quickly, and David and Colby looked up at him miserably; neither of them could bear to see the results of his shot, and they'd lowered their binoculars. "I missed him – he moved at the last minute," Ian said, ignoring the mingled look of apprehension and relief on the other agents' faces. Relief for Don; apprehension for Charlie. "Don and the man both took off running – we need to try to get down to Charlie before they decide to come back." As he spoke, they shouldered their packs and Ian slung his rifle over his shoulder, and they clambered as quickly as they dared back over the rocks of the outcropping, toward the trail.

Don charged back into the clearing, relieved beyond measure to see that Charlie was still conscious, still alive. He came to a stop over him, looking around quickly to make sure they were alone. The fog was rolling through the area in earnest now, big thick gray wet clouds. He looked down at Charlie, only to see his brother turn agonized eyes away from him, averting his face. He was trembling, his cheeks wet with tears of pain and betrayal. "J-just do it," he whispered, and closed his eyes, shaking.

Don realized belatedly that he was still holding his pistol, standing over him – Charlie thought he was going to shoot him, for God's sake – he was lying there, helplessly waiting for the shot that would end his life. The realization stunned Don for a moment; then he came to his senses, hurriedly holstered his gun and bent down over his brother, his hands gently pushing aside fog-drenched curls and cupping Charlie's face. "Charlie – God, Charlie, no. I'm not going to shoot you. Charlie, Charlie, look at me."

He gently turned Charlie's face up toward him, and the dark eyes opened. Charlie's face was still so twisted with pain and fear, Don couldn't tell if his words had registered or not. He moved back just a little to examine him, trying to figure out the best way to move him – he had to move him, had to hide him somewhere while he went back after the man. He could feel a trickle of blood running down his arm under the sleeve of the black nylon-spandex hiking shirt he wore – that sleeve was wet with blood. He ignored it; he needed to get Charlie some place safe, and he looked back down at him, trying to figure out how to lift him, the best way to carry him. He had no idea of the scope of his injuries; he couldn't simply fling him over his shoulder.

"This is going to hurt, Charlie," he said softly. "I'm so sorry, but I have to move you somewhere safer."

Charlie's arm came up as Don eased his arms under him, and for a moment, he thought Charlie was going to try to push him away, but instead, his brother reached out and grabbed at his shirt for support as Don strained to lift him as gently as he could. Charlie cried out in agony as his foot left the ground; Don could see it hanging there like something lifeless as he slowly turned with Charlie's body cradled against his chest. Don could feel wetness where his arm supported Charlie's hip, but he knew it was the wetness of his own sleeve, soaked with blood.

Charlie's eyes were closed, but he was still clinging to consciousness. His hand was wrapped in the front of Don's shirt, and the trusting gesture, after all that Charlie had been through, after what Don had made him think, made Don's eyes sting. Or maybe it wasn't trusting; maybe it was simply a desperate effort to support himself, to hold himself in a more comfortable position. Maybe Charlie was allowing himself to be carried because he had no choice; he couldn't struggle with his injuries. Maybe Charlie didn't trust him – maybe he would never trust him again.

Grunting with the effort, Don stepped across the rocky clearing, wading carefully through the shallow creek and trying to stay to rocky ground on the other side to conceal his tracks, walking west along the creek on a small trail, probably used by fishermen. He would get Charlie as far as he could, and headed in the direction of the main trail to get him that much closer to eventual rescue.

He trudged until he got to a rocky overhang, downstream and just off the small trail; it wasn't too far from the clearing, but in the fog it was far enough – and he was spent. God knew, Charlie was small and slight in ordinarily times, and was now bordering on gaunt, but cradling him in his arms was difficult especially with Don's own wound, and Don was afraid to carry him any other way, considering Charlie's injuries. The overhang was recessed into the steep slope – the south side of the valley, and fronted by bushes. Charlie would be hidden by anyone passing on the trail.

Charlie groaned in pain as Don slowly set him down in the dimness under the huge rock, shifting fitfully, and Don realized with a nasty jolt that his brother's leg was twisted; the foot turned at a sharp angle from the leg. He gently eased it back into a more normal position; then anxiously looked at Charlie's face. Charlie's eyes were glazed and his lids were fluttering, and Don could feel a lump forming in his throat. He had to leave him – had to at least go out and reconnoiter the area around them. Charlie was pinned in place by his injuries – if the man found them, he would shoot at them from out of the fog bank, taking advantage of Charlie's inability to move, maneuvering until he killed them. Don had to find him, before the man found them first. He didn't admit to the hatred that was driving him – the black, overwhelming need to kill the man who had done this.

"Charlie, I have to go find him," he said softly. "I'll be back; then we'll get you out of here. You just need to hang in there, okay? If you hear anyone, stay quiet – you're hidden under here. I'll be back, I promise."

The statement reminded him of his last promise, made to his father in the kitchen. "I'll watch over him, Dad, I promise." Those words rang in his head now, mocking him, as he rose and slipped back out on the trail. His father had trusted him with Charlie. Charlie himself, after Don had given him every reason not to, had trusted him, and this was the result.

His black long sleeved T-shirt felt damp from where Charlie pressed against it, and normally it would have chilled him, but he was hot with adrenaline. Without the jacket his gun and holster were exposed, and to make it less obvious that he was packing he slipped the gun out of its holster and tucked into the waistband of his jeans in the back. A few feet back down the trail, he removed the holster and tossed it aside in some bushes. The current was still buzzing in his head like an angry hornet, and fury over what had happened, hatred toward the man who had caused all this seeped through his mind like black ink. He made his way back to the clearing where he'd found Charlie and began to track his way back through the fog, following scattered droplets of blood. He had hit the bastard and he was bleeding; Don took grim satisfaction in that. He would find the son of a bitch, if it was the last thing he did.

J. Scott Marsh stopped running and stood gasping, forcing himself to listen for sounds of pursuit. His shoulder throbbed with agony, and he could feel blood running down his shirt, inside the vest. He checked the wound, quickly. It was a through-and-through, with the entry and exit holes in his upper arm. He fumbled with the pockets of the vest and flipped open the small video screen, while he searched another pocket for a bandana to bind the wound. He had to see where Eppes was, what he was doing. He had to stop running, and plan.

The screen was dark, and Marsh cursed. Don Eppes had either taken off the jacket or disabled the camera, somehow. He wrapped his arm as well as he could and stood for a moment, leaning against a tree, trying to gather his thoughts. The Eppes men had set him up, there was no doubt – either that or something had gone wrong with the controller. He'd taken a quick desperate shot at the professor as he saw Don Eppes' gun swing toward him, and even with the ensuing pain and shock of his own bullet wound, he caught a glimpse of Charlie as he pulled the trigger of his own gun. The quick jerk of Charlie's body that told Marsh that he'd hit him, somewhere in the torso. It might well have been a fatal wound. It could be that the only person he had to deal with now was Don Eppes - maybe he could still make it out of this. He could get his shoulder patched up somewhere; get back to Vegas to his sister's to recuperate for a couple of days, and then back home to D.C.

As he thought about it, perhaps the murder-suicide plan wasn't even out of the question - the bullet in Charlie Eppes had come from his gun. As far as he could tell, they were alone in the woods. He could kill Don Eppes with that same gun, leave it with him, and instead take the Beretta he had given Eppes – it would still look like the gun that had killed both of them had belonged to Don Eppes. Yes, he could still possibly stage something that would look as though Don had killed his brother and then himself. If not, and it ended up being plainly murder, it still didn't matter – they couldn't trace it back to him. Both his gun and the Beretta were unregistered street pieces that Jorge Cazares had obtained for him in L.A. They were untraceable. Yes, there was no question; he couldn't leave until they both were dead.

He glanced at the low growth at his feet, spattered with his dripping blood. He'd found a trail and stayed on it because it was faster, easier going, and he was sure he'd left droplets of blood along the way. If Don Eppes was trying to follow him, he'd be coming along it, and if he wasn't he'd likely be with his brother. Either way, Marsh had to head back towards them. He moved back out onto the trail, backtracking for a few yards, and then slipped through some bushes along the edge, making sure he left no traces of blood that would show that he'd left the trail. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he began creeping back the way he had come, along the trail but off to one side, through the fog-shrouded trees.

Ian, Colby, and David came into the clearing near the stream bent low with guns extended, all of them peering into the fog around them. They stepped smoothly without the bulky packs; they'd left them at the top of the slope hidden in some bushes so they could move without hindrance. It was obvious that Charlie was gone, and Ian frowned as he squatted near where he'd seen him lying. There was blood on the rocky ground, the question was, whose? He couldn't have done more than wing Don Eppes; he guessed that he had hit him in the upper arm. Of course, if he'd hit an artery, there would be a sizable amount of blood, but considering how quickly Don had moved after the shot, Ian surmised that his hit hadn't caused too much damage. The blood was right where Charlie had been lying; it had to be his. "I think Charlie might have been hit," he said. "Hopefully, not too badly since he's not here; and there doesn't appear to be a lot of blood. Don and the other man ran off into the trees as soon as they were hit. Charlie must have gotten out of here under his own power."

"Either that, or one of them doubled back for him," said Colby, grimly.

Ian stood and pulled his radio from his belt, walking the clearing, examining the traces of blood on the ground. "We're at the clearing," he said into the radio, to Masters. "Do you have a position on Don?"

Masters' voice came back to through the speaker. "We do, but he's showing as stationary, not too far from where you are. We're betting he ditched the jacket. Did you find Charlie?"

"Negative," said Ian. "We think he's hurt, but he must have taken off, or maybe he's with one of them. There's a blood trail leading northwest of here, which is the direction that I saw Don and the man take, and another that looks like it might head back across the creek, to the south. I'm hoping that one is Charlie's – we're going to go check it out."

"Roger that. We've got men cordoning off the area, patrolling the roads, and there's an army medical chopper on the way. It'll come in due south of you, there's an open flat area in the next valley over."

"Roger." Ian hit a button on the radio and clipped it back on his belt, turning toward the creek. "Let's go. I think this blood trail might be Charlie's – it's in the opposite direction of where the others headed."

Charlie lay under the overhang, his body racked by uncontrollable trembling, brought on by shock and pain. The pain in his hip and his gut were ramping up, growing to a point to rival the agony in his leg. His entire left side from the waist down was throbbing, aching; burning.

When the bullet had first hit, he hadn't even known he'd been shot. He'd seen Don start to raise his gun toward his head and he closed his eyes; he couldn't bear to watch as his brother pulled the trigger. There were two sharp cracks and he had felt his body jerk; at first he'd thought Don had hit him in the hip with the club again, he could feel the strike but it didn't hurt badly – at least not as much as Charlie would have imagined a bullet would hurt. He had kept his eyes closed as the sound of running footsteps grating on rock sounded around him and then receded; then he shakily opened his eyes.

Don and the man were gone; something had scared them off, and Charlie had wondered if it was Ian, Colby, and David. As the seconds ticked by, however, he realized he was alone, and the pain in his hip began in earnest. He craned his neck to look but his dark sweatpants revealed nothing, so he had touched the area tentatively and his hand came away red with blood. That was when he realized that the blow he'd felt had been caused by a bullet; it had apparently struck him in the lower abdomen, just inside the left hipbone. Whether the bullet belonged to Don or the unknown man, he didn't know, and it didn't matter. If it wasn't Don's it might as well have been. Charlie had seen the look of hatred, the cold sneer on his face as Dan had asked him whether he should shoot him, or let him suffer. In spite of all of Wilkes' work with him, Don hadn't been deprogrammed – and probably never would be. Charlie was going to die out here, knowing that he'd never have his brother back – knowing that the Don he knew was gone after all, and was never returning.

It seemed an eon, a lifetime of pain, but Don did return, standing over him with a gun, back to finish the job. By that time, Charlie's heart had broken, along with his will to live, and he begged him for deliverance, begged him to take the shot and finish it. Instead, to Charlie's surprise, Don had put the gun away, and gently touched his face, telling Charlie that he wouldn't hurt him. He looked and sounded like Don, except for his eyes – they were still dark and distant, and Charlie knew that Don was still under the influence of the controller. As badly as he wanted to trust him, he couldn't. Still, when Don carefully lifted him, Charlie's hand had seemed to act of its own accord, reaching for Don's shirt, clutching it desperately, as if clinging to hope, grasping for the brother he once knew.

Now, he lay there under the rock overhang, in the semi-darkness. Don was gone again, and Charlie lay there in mounting misery, shaking, his mind only half-functioning, incapacitated by pain. He dimly remembered Don saying he had to go but he'd be back; his voice sounding distressed, apologetic, but Charlie wasn't sure if the memory was real, or if it was just something that he wanted to hear, conjured up by a pain-riddled mind. It was quite possible that Don had chosen to let him suffer, and left him to die under this rock. He didn't know anymore; he couldn't think. There was nothing but pain…

Don stepped along the trail, his head down, searching for blood spatter. Although the fog made it difficult to see, at least it wasn't raining – the blood drops were visible enough that Don could pick them up. It soon became apparent that the man was following a small trail that led northwest, away from the clearing and the creek, and that made the tracking easier. Don picked up his pace, his eyes searching for the blood drops that would verify he was still on the right track. He was focused on a drop a few yards ahead, when suddenly a body hurtled itself at him from the dense brush beside the trail.

The man was big and hit him hard; Don landed sideways on his ribcage, and the air left him with a whoosh. He responded instantaneously, landing a punch then grasping at his opponent, who had apparently hoped to knock him down and then finish him off with the gun that he held. The man was still wearing his ski mask; Don could see gray keen-looking eyes through the holes, narrowed with the effort of the struggle – or possibly from the pain of the man's injured right shoulder. That shoulder was obviously hampering his efforts, but Don was more worried about the man's hand, which held the gun. They rolled, and Don gripped the man's wrist with fingers of iron, trying to dislodge the weapon. The man forced him onto his back and Don could feel his own gun digging into his spine, and he was thankful that he'd taken it out of the more obvious holster. If the man didn't know it was there, Don might have a chance to get to it…

The man fought dirty, trying to land punches with his left hand, trying to claw at Don's face. Suddenly he shifted, attempting to pull away. The tone of the struggle had changed, and Don knew that his assailant was panicking, and now appeared simply to be trying to cut his losses and escape. He gave the man's hand a powerful jerk, dashing it against the rocky trail, and the gun came loose, bouncing away into the brush. The man was desperate now, and he landed a knee in Don's gut that took his breath away, but he still clung hard to the man's right wrist – there was no way he was letting go.

The man's shoulder injury was preventing him from wrenching his right hand out of Don's grasp, but he still managed to come down with a nasty chop with his left hand on Don's right shoulder. Don gritted his teeth as he felt the battery on that side grind into his collarbone, and he returned with a jab at the man's jaw, his fist connecting hard with the ski mask. The man spun away with a grunt, and the twisting motion made Don lose his grip on the man's right hand. He grasped at air as the man rolled, catching the armhole of his vest, and the man pulled away, his arm popping free. Don rolled to his feet, still gripping the vest as the man found his feet and pulled his other arm out, trying to stumble away. Don was left holding the vest; he cast it aside and ran after the man, diving, hitting him in his legs in a flying tackle, and as he hit, he felt an odd metallic snap near his right collarbone, as some part of the assembly on that side gave way. At the same instant, he felt an excruciating rush of pain through the right side of his head, and he rolled off, barely aware of the man jumping to his feet and dashing away, out of sight around a bend, into the fog.

The pain was so intense that Don could emit no sound for a moment; he lay there writhing helpless on the ground, grasping his head with both hands and curling in on himself. The right side of his head was buzzing, breaking, on fire…

Some working fragment of his brain told him that something had gone wrong with the device, and the vest must have a control to turn off the current. He rolled somehow, and saw it lying there where he had thrown it. Groaning, gasping, tears of pain streaming from his eyes, Don crawled toward it haltingly, half blind with agony, certain that if he couldn't manage to turn off the controller in time, it would kill him.

End Chapter 55

A/N: I seem to have become addicted to cliffies. You just fell off one ledge onto the next, but this time you shouldn't have to wait so long.