The Intruders

by Stephen Coonts

  He slammed his hand down on the dresser and the photo on top fell over. “I’m not God. I don’t know if we should have gone to Vietnam or if we should have left sooner or if the war was right or wrong. The self-righteous assholes who stayed at home can argue about all that until hell freezes. And it looks like they’re going to.

  “I took an oath. I swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States. So I obeyed orders. I did what I was told to the absolute best of my ability. Just like your brother. And what did it get us? Me and your brother? You and me? Jake and Callie—what did it get us?”

  He took a ragged breath. He was perspiring and he felt sick. Slightly nauseated. “It isn’t your father. It’s me. I can’t just forget.”

  “Jake, we must all live with the past. And walk on into the future.”

  “Maybe you and I aren’t ready for the future yet.”

  She didn’t reply.

  “Well, maybe I’m not,” he admitted.

  She was biting her lip.

  “You aren’t either,” he added.

  When she didn’t answer he picked up the folding bag and carry-on. “Tell your mom thanks.” He went out the door.

  She heard him descend the stairs. She heard the front door open. She heard it close.

  Then her tears came.

  Almost an hour later she descended the stairs. She was at the bottom when she heard her mother’s voice coming from the study. “You blathering fool! I’m sick of hearing you sermonize about the war. I’m sick of your righteousness. I’m sick of you damning the world from the safety of your alabaster pedestal.”

  “Mary, that war was an obscenity. That war was wrong, a great wrong, and the blind stupidity of boys like Grafton made it possible. If Grafton and boys like him had refused to go, there wouldn’t have been a war.”

  “Boys? Jake Grafton is no boy. He’s a man!”

  “He doesn’t think,” Professor McKenzie said, his voice dripping contempt. “He can’t think. I don’t call him much of a man.”

  Callie sank to the steps. She had never heard her parents address each other in such a manner. She felt drained, empty, but their voices held her mesmerized.

  “Oh, he’s a man all right,” her mother said. “He just doesn’t think like you do. He’s got the brains and talent to fly jet aircraft in combat. He’s got the character to be a naval officer, and I suspect he’s a pretty good one. I know that doesn’t impress you much, but Callie knows what he is. He’s got the maturity and character to impress her.”

  “Then she’s too easily impressed. That girl doesn’t know—”

  “Enough, you fool!” said Mary McKenzie bitterly. “We’ve got a son who did his duty as he saw it and you’ve never let him forget that you think he’s a stupid, contemptible fascist. Your only son. So he doesn’t come here anymore. He won’t come here. Your opinion is just your opinion, Wallace—you can’t seem to get it through your thick head that other people can honorably hold different opinions. And a great many people do.”

  “I—”

  His wife raised her voice and steamed on. “I’m going to say this just once, Wallace, so you had better listen. Callie may marry Jake Grafton, regardless of our wishes. In her way she’s almost as pigheaded as you are. Jake Grafton’s every inch the man that Theron is, and he won’t put up with your bombast and supercilious foolishness any more than Theron does. Grafton proved that here tonight. I don’t blame him.”

  “Callie won’t marry that—”

  “You damned old windbag, shut up! What you know about your daughter could be printed in foot-high letters on the head of a pin.”

  She shouted that last sentence, then fell silent. When she spoke again her voice was cold, every word enunciated clearly:

  “It will be a miracle if Jake Grafton ever walks through that door again. So I’m serving notice on you, Wallace, here and now. Your arrogance almost cost me my son. If it costs me my daughter, I’m divorcing you.”

  Before Callie could move from her seat on the steps, Mrs. McKenzie came striding through the study door. She saw Callie and stopped dead.

  Callie rose, turned, and forced herself to climb the stairs.

  2

  After a miserable night in a motel near O‘hare, Jake got a seat the next day on the first flight to Seattle. Unfortunately, the next Harbor Airlines flight to Oak Harbor was full, so he had two hours to kill at Sea-Tac. He headed for the bar and sat nursing a beer.

  The war was over, yet it wasn’t. That was the crazy thing.

  He had tried to keep his cool in Chicago and had done a fair job until the professor goaded him beyond endurance. Now he sat going over the mess again, for the fifteenth time, wondering what Callie was thinking, wondering what she felt.

  The ring was burning a hole in his pocket. He pulled it out and looked at it from time to time, trying to shield it in his hand so that casual observers wouldn’t think him weird.

  Maybe he ought to throw the damned thing away. It didn’t look like he was ever going to get to give it to Callie, not in this lifetime, anyway, and he certainly wasn’t going to hang on to it for future presentation to whomever. He was going to have to do something with it.

  He had been stupid to buy the ring in the first place. He should have waited until she said Yes, then taken her to a jewelry store and let her pick out the ring. Normal guys got the woman first, the ring second. A fellow could avoid a lot of pitfalls if he did it the tried-and-true traditional way.

  Water under the bridge.

  But, God! he felt miserable. So empty, as if he had absolutely nothing to live for.

  He was glumly staring into his beer mug when he heard a man’s voice ask, “Did you get that in Vietnam?”

  Jake looked. Two stools down sat a young man, no more than twenty-two or -three. His left hand was a hook sticking out of his sleeve. His interrogator was older, pushing thirty, bigger, and stood waiting for the bartender to draw him a beer.

  “Yeah,” the kid said. “Near Chu Lai.”

  “Serves you right,” the older man said as he tossed his money on the bar and picked up his beer. He turned away.

  Jake Grafton was off his stool and moving without conscious thought. He laid a heavy hand on the man’s shoulder and spun him around. Beer slopped from the man’s mug.

  “You sonuvabitch!” the man roared. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “You owe this guy an apology.”

  “My ass!” Then the look on Grafton’s face sank in. “Now hold on, you bastard! I’ve got a black belt in—”

  That was all he managed to get out, because Jake seized a beer bottle sitting on the bar and smashed it against the man’s head with a sweeping backhand. The big man went to the floor, stunned.

  Grafton grabbed wet, bloody hair with his right hand and lifted. He grabbed a handful of balls with his left and brought the man to his feet, then started him sideways. With a heave he threw him through the plate-glass window onto the concourse.

  As the glass tinkled down Jake walked out the door of the bar and approached the man. He lay stunned, surrounded by glass fragments. The glass grated under Jake’s shoes.

  Jake squatted.

  The man was semiconscious, bleeding from numerous small cuts. His eyes swam, then focused on Grafton.

  “You got off lucky this time. I personally know a dozen men who would have killed you for that crack you made in there. There’s probably thousands of them.”

  Slivers of glass stuck out of the man’s face in several places.

  “If I were you I’d give up karate. You aren’t anywhere near tough enough. Maybe you oughta try ballet.”

  He stood and walked back into the bar, ignoring the gaping onlookers. The ex-soldier was still sitting on the stool.

  “How much for the beers?” Jake asked the bartender.

  “Yours?”

  “Mine and this gentleman’s. I’m buying his too.”

  “Four bucks.”

  Jake tossed a five-spot on the bar. Th
rough the now-empty frame of the window he saw a policeman bending over the man lying on the concourse.

  Jake held out his hand to the former soldier, who shook it.

  “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “Yeah I did,” Jake said. “I owed it to myself.”

  The bartender held out his hand. “I was in the Army for a couple years. I’d like to shake your hand too.”

  Jake shook it.

  “Well,” he said to the one-handed veteran, who was looking at his hook, “don’t let the assholes grind you down.”

  “He isn’t the only one,” the man murmured, nodding toward the concourse.

  “I know. We got a fucking Eden here, don’t we?”

  He left the bar and introduced himself to the first cop he saw.

  It was about four o’clock on Monday afternoon when a police officer opened the cell door.

  “You’re leaving, Grafton. Come on.”

  The officer walked behind Jake, who was decked out in a blue jumpsuit and shuffled along in rubber shower sandals that were several sizes too big. He had been in the can all weekend. He had used his one telephone call when he was arrested on Saturday to call the squadron duty officer at NAS Whidbey.

  “You’re where?” that worthy had demanded, apparently unable to believe his own ears.

  “The King County Jail,” Jake repeated.

  “I’ll be damned! What’d you do, kill somebody?”

  “Naw. Threw a guy out of a bar.”

  “That’s all?”

  “He went out through a plate glass window.”

  “Oh.”

  “Better put it in the logbook and call the skipper at home.”

  “Okay, Jake. Don’t bend over to pick up the soap.”

  This afternoon he got into his civilian clothes in the same room in which he had undressed, the same room, incidentally, in which he had been fingerprinted and photographed. When he was dressed an officer passed him an envelope that contained the items from his pockets.

  Jake examined the contents of the envelope. His airline tickets were still there, his wallet, change, and the ring. He pocketed the ring and counted the money in the wallet.

  “Don’t see many white guys in here carrying diamond rings,” the cop said chattily.

  Grafton wasn’t in the mood.

  “Dopers seem to have pockets full of them,” the cop continued. “And burglars. You haven’t been crawling through any windows, have you?”

  “Not lately.” Jake snapped his wallet shut and pocketed it.

  “Bet it helps you get laid a lot.”

  “Melts their panties. Poked your daughter last week.”

  “Sign this receipt, butthole.”

  Jake did so.

  They led him out to a desk. His commanding officer, Commander Dick Donovan, was sitting in a straight-backed chair. He didn’t bother watching as Jake signed two more pieces of paper thrust at him by the desk sergeant. One was a promise to appear in three weeks for a preliminary hearing before a magistrate. Jake pocketed his copy.

  “You’re free to go,” the sergeant said.

  Donovan came out of his chair and headed for the door. Jake trailed along behind him.

  In the parking lot Jake got into the passenger seat of Donovan’s car. Donovan still hadn’t said a word. He was a big man, easily six foot three, with wide shoulders and huge feet. He was the first bombardier-navigator (BN) to ever command the replacement squadron, VA-128.

  “Thanks for bailing me out, Skipper.”

  “I have a lot better things to do with my time than driving all the way to Seattle to bail an officer out of jail. An officer! A bar brawl! I almost didn’t come. I shouldn’t have. I wish I hadn’t.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t shit me, Mister. You aren’t sorry! You weren’t even drunk when you threw that guy through that window. You’d had exactly half of one beer. I read the police report and the witnesses’ statements. You aren’t sorry and you’ve got no excuse.”

  “I’m sorry you had to drive down here, sir. I’m not sorry for what I did to that guy. He had it coming.”

  “Just who do you think you are, Grafton? Some comic book superhero? Who gave you the right to punish every jerk out there that deserves it? That’s what cops and courts are for.”

  “Okay, I shouldn’t have done it.”

  “You’re breaking my heart.”

  “Thanks for bailing me out. You didn’t have to do it. I know that.”

  “Not that you give a good goddamn.”

  “It really doesn’t matter.”

  “What should I do with you now?”

  “Whatever you feel you gotta do, Skipper. Write a bad fittie, letter of reprimand, court-martial, whatever. It’s your call. If you want, I’ll give you a letter of resignation tomorrow.”

  “Just like that,” Donovan muttered.

  “Just like that.”

  “Is that what you want? Out of the Navy?”

  “I haven’t thought about it.”

  “Sir!” Donovan snarled.

  “Sir.”

  Donovan fell silent. He got on I-5 and headed north. He didn’t take the exit for the Mukilteo ferry, but stayed on the freeway. He was in no mood for the ferry. He was going the long way around, across the bridge at Deception Pass to Whid-bey Island.

  Jake merely sat and watched the traffic. None of it mattered anymore. The guys who died in Vietnam, the ones who were maimed…all that carnage and suffering…just so assholes could insult them in airports? So college professors could sneer? So the lieutenants who survived could fret about their fitness reports while they climbed the career ladder rung by slippery rung?

  June…in the year of our Lord 1973.

  In Virginia his dad would be working from dawn to dark. His father knew the price that had to be paid, so he paid it, and he reaped the reward. The calves were born and thrived, the cattle gained weight, the crops grew and matured and were harvested.

  Perhaps he should go back to Virginia, get some sort of job. He was tired of the uniform, tired of the paperwork, even…even tired of the flying. It was all so absolutely meaningless.

  Donovan was guiding the car through Mount Vernon when he spoke again. “It took eighty-seven stitches to sew that guy up.”

  Jake wasn’t paying attention. He made a polite noise.

  “His balls were swollen up the size of oranges.” The skipper sighed. “Eighty-seven stitches is a lot, but there shouldn’t be any permanent injuries. Just some scars. So I talked to the prosecutor. There won’t be a trial.”

  Jake grunted. He was half listening to Donovan now, but the commander’s words were just that, words.

  “The prosecutor walked out from the Chosin Reservoir with the Fifth Marines,” Donovan continued. “He read the police report and the statements by the bartender and that crippled soldier. The police file and complaint are going to be lost.”

  “Humpf,” Jake said.

  “So you owe me five hundred bucks. Two hundred which I posted as bail and three hundred to replace that window you broke. You can write me a personal check.”

  “Thanks, Skipper.”

  “Of course, that jerk could try to cash in on his eighty-seven stitches if he can find a lawyer stupid enough to bring a civil suit. A jury might make you pay the hospital and doctor bill, but I doubt if they would give the guy a dime more than that. Never can tell about juries, though.”

  “Eighty-seven,” Jake murmured.

  “So you can pack your bags,” Donovan continued. “I’m sending you to the Marines. Process servers can’t get you if you’re in the middle of the Pacific.”

  With a growing sense of horror Jake realized the import of Commander Donovan’s words. “The Marines?”

  “Yeah. Marine A-6 outfit is going to sea on Columbia. They don’t have any pilots with carrier experience. BUPERS”—the Bureau of Naval Personnel—“is looking for some Navy volunteers to go to sea with them. Consider yourself volunteered.”


  “Jesus H. Christ, Skipper!” he spluttered. “I just completed two ‘Nam cruises five months ago.” He fell silent, tongue-tied as the full implications of this disaster pressed in upon him.

  Shore duty was the payback, the flying vacation from two combat cruises, the night cat shots, the night traps, getting shot at, shot up and shot down. Those nigh rides down the catapults…sweet Jesus how he had hated those. And the night approaches, in terrible weather, sometimes in a shot-up airplane, with never enough gas—it made him want to puke just thinking about that shit. And here was Tiny Dick Donovan proposing to send him right back to do eight or nine more months of it!

  Aww, fuck! It just wasn’t fair!

  “The gooks damn near killed me over North Vietnam a dozen times! It’s a miracle I’m still alive. And now you feed me a shit sandwich.”

  That just popped out. Dick Donovan didn’t seem to hear. It dawned on Jake that the commander probably couldn’t be swayed with sour grapes.

  In desperation, Jake attacked in the only direction remaining. “The jarheads maintain their planes with ball peen hammers and pipe wrenches,” he roared, his voice beyond its owner’s control. “Their planes are flying deathtraps.”

  When Donovan didn’t reply to this indisputable truth, Jake lost the bubble completely. “You can’t do this to me! I—”

  “Wanna bet?”

  There were three staff instructors seated at stools at the bar nursing beers when Jake walked into the O Club. The afternoon sun streamed through the tall windows. If you squinted against the glare you could see the long lazy reach of Puget Sound, placid in the calm evening, more like a pond than an arm of the sea. If you looked closely though, you could see the rise and fall of gentle swells.

  Jake broke the news that he was on his way to the Marine squadron going aboard Columbia. He could see by the looks on their faces that they already knew. Bad news rides a fast horse.

  Heads bobbed solemnly.

  “Well, shore duty gets old quick.”

  “Yeah. Whidbey ain’t bad, but it ain’t Po City.”

  Their well-meaning remarks gave Jake no comfort, although he tried to maintain a straight face. Not being a liberty hound, the whores and whiskey of Olongapo City in the Philippines had never been much of an attraction for him. He felt close to tears. This was what he wanted more of—the flying without combat, an eight-thousand-foot runway waiting for his return, relaxed evenings on dry land with mountains on the horizon, the cool breeze coming in off the sound, delicious weekends to loaf through.