The Intruders

by Stephen Coonts

  He came to another open hatchway, a short passageway across the superstructure to the starboard side of the ship.

  He paused, trying to decide what to do. Sweat was running into his eyes. And he was thirsty as holy hell. What he wouldn’t give for one drink of water!

  Flap’s head popped around the corner on the starboard side. He saw Jake and came his way. “What did ya shoot at?”

  “Someone on the bridge.”

  “There’s at least five more guys on this tub, probably more.”

  “How come they aren’t coming after us?”

  “We’re probably pretty near their base. When they pull in, someone on the pier will take care of us.”

  “We gotta get off this bucket.”

  “They’ll gun us in the water.”

  Jake wiped the sweat from his eyes and tried to think. “Somebody is probably in the engine room,” he said. “The ladder down is here on the port side. What say you go up to the bridge and keep them occupied. I’ll go to the engine room and try to disable this tub. Then we go over the side.”

  “Which way?”

  “Port side. In five minutes.”

  “My watch isn’t working.”

  “About five minutes. Or if the engines stop.”

  “Okay.”

  Jake checked to make sure no one was in sight, then he moved back to the engine room hatch, opened it and latched it open. The ladder down was actually a steep stair.

  Uh-oh. He wished he hadn’t volunteered to do this.

  What the hell! They were dead this morning when this pirate ship came over the horizon.

  With the rifle at the ready and the safety off, he eased down the ladder, waiting for the inevitable bullet.

  This is like committing suicide slowly.

  The area at the bottom of the ladder was shielded by a large condenser. Jake paused behind it, wiped the sweat from his hands and gripped the rifle carefully. He eased his head out, so that he could look with one eye. He was looking aft along a narrow passageway between the ship’s two diesel engines. He saw a leg, the back of a leg. He pulled his head back and turned so he could see forward. Ease the head out and peek. No one.

  Okay. Someone aft, no one visible forward. He would step out, shoot the guy aft, then swing so he could shoot forward.

  That was a good plan.

  He was going to get shot. Sure as shit.

  He took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. His heart was pounding a mile a minute.

  Now!

  He leaped out and squeezed the trigger.

  The man was using a pipe wrench on a valve. The bullets slammed him down. Jake spun. A man coming through the door shooting as Jake’s bullets caught him, hammered him.

  Something slammed into Jake’s side, turning him half around.

  He staggered, leaned back against the starboard engine and looked aft.

  The man there wasn’t moving. The man forward had taken at least three in the chest.

  Jake dug the extra magazine out of his chest pocket and substituted it for the magazine in his weapon. His left side was numb. Shock. He staggered aft. The magazine of the AK-47 on the floor looked like it still held ten shells or so. He pocketed it.

  Now he heard a racket from topside that he knew were shots. Flap. He peered through the open hatch that led forward.

  Fuel valves. This guy had been opening or closing these valves. The main tank must be on the other side of this bulkhead.

  Which ones were the feed lines? He picked two that looked like they went up over the engines to the fuel injectors. Holding the rifle in his left hand, he began screwing the starboard engine valve shut. Then he closed the one to the port engine.

  The engines would take a minute or so to die. If he had picked the right valves.

  Unwilling to wait, he spied a large red valve at the bottom of the bulkhead with a pipe that wasn’t connected to anything. The valve had a rusty padlock on it. Must be the tank drain valve. He put one bullet into the lock. The lock broke, and diesel fuel began running out of the bullet hole.

  Jake twisted the valve. It was rusty.

  Desperate to be out of here, he laid down the rifle and used both hands. It opened. Fuel began running out, at first a trickle, then a steady stream. He kept twisting.

  The steady throb of the diesels took on a new note. Several cylinders missed. The starboard engine died. By the time the port engine stopped he had the drain valve full open. He was getting splashed with diesel fuel.

  The lights died to a dim glow when the port engine quit. With the generators off, the lights were using battery juice.

  He grabbed the rifle and started aft through the engine room for the ladder. He heard more shots, quite clearly now that the engines were silent.

  His left side was pretty bloody and the pain was fierce.

  Well, if he was going to fuck these guys, he should do the job right. He went back to the second man he shot and ripped his shirt off. It was cotton. He went back to the drain valve and let some diesel fuel run onto the shirt. He squeezed the shirt to get rid of the excess and dug his lighter out of his pocket.

  The plastic butane piece of shit refused to light. He blew several times on the flint wheel. Come on, goddamnit!

  There. He held the flame under a corner of the shirt. It took. He waited until the shirt was going pretty well, then dropped it into the gap between the catwalk and one engine. The diesel fuel was running into the bilges there.

  The fire lit with a whoof.

  Jake eased his head around the corner of the ladder, and jerked it back just in time. Bullets spanged into the condenser.

  The fire was spreading in the bilges. Already the smoke was dense, the lights barely visible.

  This couldn’t be the only ladder topside. The other ladder must be on the starboard side. Trying not to breathe the smoke, he hurried that way.

  Coughing and gagging, he found the ladder.

  Was there someone up here waiting for him?

  “Come on, Jake.” Flap’s voice.

  He was having trouble breathing and his feet were getting damned hot. Somehow he lost the rifle. He scrambled up the ladder on all fours, slipped and slammed his head against a step and slid a couple steps before he caught himself.

  Hands grabbed him and pulled. He kept scrambling and somehow they made the deck.

  “I’ve been shot.”

  “Let’s get over the side or you’ll get shot again. There’s at least four of them forward.”

  “Where?”

  “We go off the fantail. Ship’s sideways in the river.”

  They went that way, Jake barely able to walk. He took deep breaths, trying to get enough oxygen. Spots swam before his eyes. “They’ll shoot us in the water.”

  “It’s our only chance. Come on.”

  Flap tossed his AK-47 into the water, then jumped after it. Jake followed.

  The darkness was almost total now. Jake was only able to swim with his right arm. His left side felt like it was on fire. Several times he got mouthfuls of water, so he swallowed them. It tasted good.

  He was struggling. More water in his mouth and nose. He gagged.

  “Just float. I’ve got you.” And Flap did have him, by the collar of his flight suit.

  Jake concentrated on staying afloat and breathing against the pain in his side.

  Flap was pulling him backward, so he could see the foreshortened outline of the ship, and smoke black as coal oozing out amidships. He could also see the glow of fire coming from a ladder well, apparently the one on the port side, since he could now see the tip of the bow. All this registered without his thinking about it, which was good, since he needed desperately to concentrate on breathing and keeping his head above water.

  They were maybe fifty yards from the ship when he saw muzzle flashes from the bow.

  “They’re shooting,” he tried to say, but he swallowed more water.

  “Relax,” Flap whispered. “Quit trying to help. Let me do this.”

&nbs
p; Somehow they must have swum out of the main channel, Jake realized, because the ship was pulling away from them. The current must be taking her downstream.

  The current and the darkness saved them. When the twenty-millimeter cannon on the bow opened up, the bullets hit downstream, abeam the ship. Bursts split the night for almost a minute, but none of the shells even came close.

  22

  “I never saw a knife like that before.”

  “Designed it myself,” Flap said. “Call it a slasher.” Of course Jake couldn’t see the knife now, since they were sitting in absolute total darkness under a tree in the jungle, but Flap had borrowed his lighter and gone looking for tree moss. Now he was back and was cutting up his and Jake’s T-shirts to use as a bandage. He had inspected the wound in the glow of the lighter when they first got ashore. “It’s nasty but not deep. You are one lucky white boy. I think maybe one rib broke, and it ain’t too bad.” “Feels like one of your knives is stuck in there.” Jake sat now holding the moss in place while Flap cut up the shirts. The moss was slowing the bleeding, apparently. He heard a motorboat coming down the river. They sat silently while it passed. When the sound had faded, Jake asked, “So what are we going to do?”

  “Not much we can do tonight. There’s an overcast so there wouldn’t be much light when the moon comes up. The jungle canopy will keep it dark down here. We’re going to have to just sit tight until morning.”

  “Think they’ll come looking for us tonight?”

  “In the morning maybe. Maybe not. I hope they come. We need some weapons. All we have are my knives. Be easier to ambush them here than around their village, wherever that is.”

  “The stabber and the slasher.”

  “Yep.”

  “Where did you learn to throw a knife like that?”

  “Taught myself,” Flap told him. “It’s a skill that comes in handy occasionally.”

  Jake moved experimentally. He tried to stretch out and relax to ease the pain. After a bit he said, “I don’t think their village is far upriver. It was narrowing when we left that ship.”

  “We’ll work our way upriver in the morning. We need a boat to get out to sea.”

  “Tell you what, Tarzan, is there any way you could rustle us up some grub? My stomach thinks my throat is cut.”

  “Tomorrow. You like snake?”

  “No.”

  “Tastes like—”

  “Chicken. I’ve heard that crap before. I ate my share at survival school.”

  “Naw. Tastes like lizard.”

  “I don’t like them either.”

  “Sit up and hold up your arms and let me wrap this thing around you.”

  Jake obeyed. When Flap finished he eased his arms back into his flight suit and zipped it up. “What about bugs?”

  “They’re okay as an appetizer, but you expend about as many calories gathering them as—”

  “How are we gonna keep ’em from bleeding us dry tonight?”

  “Smear your skin with mud.”

  Jake was already encased in mud almost to his waist from wading through the goo to get ashore. He scraped some from his legs and ankles and applied it to his face and neck.

  After a bit, Flap asked, “How many guys were in the engine room?”

  “Two. What happened topside?”

  “They pinned me down. I needed a couple grenades and didn’t have them. Got one of them, though.”

  “We’re lucky to be alive.”

  “Grafton, you are the luckiest S.O.B. I know. If that bullet had been an inch farther right you’d be lying dead in that engine room. It’s scary—we’re using up oodles of luck and we’re still young men. We’re gonna be high and dry and clean out of the good stuff before we’re very much older.”

  They lay down on the jungle floor and tried to relax. Lying in the darkness in the muck, swatting at mosquitoes as the creepy-crawlies examined them—Kee-rist! Well, at least they weren’t sitting in seawater to their waist or huddled in a steel compartment waiting for an executioner to come for them.

  After a while Jake said, “Are you ever going to get married?”

  “You read my mind. I was lying here hungry and thirsty and miserable as hell contemplating that very subject. And you?”

  “Smart ass!”

  “No, seriously—why don’t you tell the Great Le Beau all about it. After all, before a man commits holy matrimony he should have the benefit of unbiased, expert counsel. Even if he plans on ignoring the pithy wisdom he will undoubtedly receive, as you most certainly will.”

  “I might get married. If she’ll say yes.”

  “Ahh—you haven’t queried your intended victim. Or you have and she refused in a rare fit of eminent good sense. Which is it?”

  “Haven’t asked.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Met her last year in Hong Kong.”

  “I met a girl in Hong Kong once upon a time,” Flap replied. “Her name was…damn! It was right on the tip of my tongue. Anyway, she worked at the Susy Wong whorehouse, a couple of blocks from the China Fleet Club. You know it? She was maybe sixteen and had long black hair that hung almost to her waist and exquisite little breasts that—”

  “I met an American girl.”

  “Umph.”

  “I knew you’d be interested, seeing how we fly together and all, so I’ll tell you. Since you aren’t sleepy and we got nothing else to do.” And he did. He told about meeting Callie, what she looked like, sounded like, how he felt when he was with her. He told Flap about her parents and about Chicago, about getting out of the Navy and what she said. He had been talking for at least half an hour when he finally realized that Le Beau was asleep.

  His side throbbed badly. He changed positions in the detritus of the jungle floor, trying to find one that would cause the least stress on his wound. The sharpness of the pain drove his mind back to the pirate ship, to the prospect of death in a few moments by execution.

  Flap threw that knife into that one guy and sliced the other’s throat in what—three seconds? Jake had never seen a man move so fast, nor had he ever seen a man butchered with a knife. Shot, yes. But not slashed to death with one swipe of the arm, his throat ripped from ear to ear, blood spurting as horror seared the victim’s face.

  Life is so fragile, so tenuous.

  Luckily he had gotten into motion before the surprise wore off the other two.

  And the engine room, the horror as that man came around the engine shooting and the bullet struck him. Now the scene ran through his mind over and over, every emotion pungent and powerful, again and again and again.

  Finally he let it go.

  He felt like he had that sticker of Flap’s stuck in his side right now.

  So those other guys died and he and Flap lived. For a few more hours.

  It was crazy. Those men, he and Flap—they were like fish in the sea, eating other fish to sustain life before they too were eaten in their turn. Kill, kill, kill.

  Man’s plight is a terribly bad joke.

  He was dozing when the sound of a motorboat going upriver brought him fully awake. Flap woke up too. They lay listening until the noise dissipated completely.

  “Wonder what happened to the pirate ship?”

  “Maybe it sank.”

  “Maybe.”

  After the sun came up the foliage was so thick that Jake had to keep his hand on Flap’s shoulder so that he wouldn’t lose him. Flap moved slowly, confidently and almost without noise. Without him Jake would have been hopelessly lost in five minutes.

  Flap caught a snake an hour or so after dawn and they skinned it and ate it raw. They drank water trapped in fallen leaves if there weren’t too many insects in it. Once they came to a tiny stream and both men lay on their stomachs and drank their fill.

  Other than the noises they made, the jungle was silent. If anyone was looking for them, they were being remarkably quiet.

  Jake and Flap heard the noises of small engines and voices for a half hour before they reached
the village, which as luck would have it, turned out to be on their side of the river. It was about noon as near as they could tell when they hit the village about a hundred yards inland. Thatched huts and kids, a few rusty jeep-type vehicles. They could smell food cooking. The aroma make Jake’s stomach growl. A dog barked somewhere.

  They stayed well back and worked their way slowly down to the riverbank to see what boats there might be.

  There were several. Two or three boats with outboard engines and one elderly cabin cruiser lay moored to a short pier just a couple of dozen yards from where Jake and Flap crouched in the jungle. Beyond the boats was a much larger pier that jutted almost to midstream. Resting against the T-shaped end of it was the hijacked ship. Above the ship numerous ropes made a latticework from bank to bank. Leafy branches of trees dangled from the ropes—camouflage. The freighter seemed to be held in place against the current mainly by taut hawsers from the bow and stern that stretched across the dark water to the river’s edge, where they were wrapped numerous times around large trees.

  From where they lay they could just see the ship’s name and home port: Che Guevara, Habana.

  Flap began to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” Jake whispered.

  “A Cuban freighter. We got shot down and almost killed over a Commie freighter. If that doesn’t take the cake!”

  “My heart bleeds for Fidel.”

  “Ain’t it a shame.”

  The ship’s cranes were in motion and at least a dozen men were visible. A large crate was lowered to the pier and six or eight men with axes began chopping it open. Apparently they didn’t have a forklift.

  Inside the box were other, smaller boxes. Pairs of men hoisted these and carried them off the pier toward the village.

  “Weapons,” Flap said. “They hijacked a ship full of weapons.”

  “What do you think was in those little boxes just now?”

  “Machine guns, I think. Look, aren’t those ammo boxes?”

  “Could be.”

  “They are. I’ve seen boxes like that before. One time up on the Cambodian border.”