Black Christmas

Chapter 13

Greg is pretty discouraged. He's made the rash decision to lead his men into Moscow now. They're in virtually the same position as before, only now they've been warned by Santa to keep off of him. He now realizes that the task force has no higher chance of success in Moscow than they did in Khatanga. The battle won't end there, so he has some thinking to do.

Gavin is the first to ask Greg to break his silence. "Shouldn't we have a new plan, boss?"

"I'm thinking. Something has to be different this time, so a plan is going to take a bit."

Eric interrupts. "We only have fifteen minutes until we reach Moscow. The plan's going to have to come faster."

Jerry thinks rationally. "Let's communicate. We can come up with something as a team."

The men start brainstorming, but Greg tunes them out. His mind tells him to come up with something on his own, so that's his plan.

He keeps thinking, but nothing he comes up with seems to him to be a good idea. His mind drifts to some crime movies he's seen. How are psychopaths usually dealt with?

Finally, something hits him. If he wants to take down a psychopath, he has to understand the psychopath. He also knows that the best person to learn about a psychopath from is one of their own. He smirks as he comes up with his greatest idea of the night.

"Have you guys ever seen Silence of the Lambs?"

"Yeah, Greg, but that's pretty irrelevant right now." Jerry looks baffled by his leader's question.

"Buffalo Bill was a psychopath. Nobody could find him because nobody understood him. They had to talk to an expert. A psychologist who just happened to be a fellow psychopath."

Jerry looks frustrated now. "You're wasting time, Greg. People are dying while you're rambling about finding a Hannibal Lecter. You better have a damn good point to this."

"That is my point, guys. We need a Hannibal Lecter to give us insight. We need to talk to a psychopath about psychopaths."

Jerry now sees what Greg is getting at. "You want us to talk to Frost."

"Damn fucking straight. He's the only one who can help us out right now. We go into Moscow knowing what we do now, we die. All of us, and a lot of the world. But we get some info from Jack Frost, find out what's making Santa tick, and maybe we have a chance. We have to do whatever it takes to have a fighting chance."

The urgency in Greg's voice rings clear. The other elves don't want to make a trip to the South Pole, but it's understood that whatever gives them any needed advantage must be done. Eric re-routes, and the elves head south for the most important discussion of their lives.