“No. They bought us tickets and we’re taking the ride. Quick, let’s drag this guy out of sight. Grab hold.”
They each took an arm.
“How bad is it?” Jake wanted to know.
“I don’t know. Burns like fire.”
“Can you keep going?”
“We’ll see.” As they dropped the body in a dark aisle, Flap muttered, “Always knew I’d get it with a knife.”
He led the way down a gloomy aisle, almost feeling his way along. “The stuff we want is down here. Fuses and wire. Found it this afternoon.”
They attacked the side of a box with Flap’s throwing knife. The nails ripping loose sounded loud as gunshots.
“How do you know what’s in each box?”
“Seen crates like these before, in Cambodia. This is all Russian stuff. The crates got symbols on them for the comrades who can’t read Russian. Like me.”
The side of the crate came loose. Flap dug into it. He came out with a handful of primers and wire. After a little more digging they extracted a timer.
“Now all we gotta do is find the plastique.”
Jake was horrified. “You don’t know where it is?”
“Couldn’t find it this afternoon.”
“Maybe it’s still on the ship.”
“Maybe. Get out your lighter and look.”
They found a crate with the lid already open. Grenades. Each man stuffed four or five into his chest pocket, then they went on.
Time was dragging. The lighter got hot and flickered. It was about out of butane. Someone was going to come check on the guards any minute now.
Jake was about to give in to despair when they found the plastique. There were at least five crates of it, piled one on top of the other.
“Boost me up,” Flap said.
Lying on top of the crates, Flap pried at the lid of the topmost one with his knife. More groaning noises, as loud as fire sirens. Finally he said, “Okay, pass up the primers and stuff.”
“How long do you want on the timer?”
“Thirty minutes.”
The timer was mechanical. Jake began winding it up as fast as he could. When the spring would go no tighter, he used the lighter. The clock face would take up to a twelve-hour delay. He set thirty minutes, then passed it up to Flap.
Two minutes passed before Flap asked for help to get down. His side was wet with warm blood.
“Those antitank rockets are down this way,” he murmured. He took four steps and fell.
Jake helped him up. “Let’s try to get a bandage on that.”
“With what?”
“Shirt off one of the corpses.”
“We don’t have the time. Come on!”
They took four of the rockets, two for each man. Flap was visibly weaker now, but in the spluttering light of the butane lighter he took the time to explain how to arm, aim and shoot. The lighter died for the last time before they were through and couldn’t be relit. Jake dropped it and slung his rifle over his back. Then he hoisted two of the rockets.
He had to help Flap to his feet. Flap hoisted his two and let the rifle lay. He turned and led the way.
Two steps out of the aisle Flap froze. A figure stood in front of him with a rifle leveled.
The captain!
“You two! I knew you weren’t dead.”
He took a step closer. “You have caused me a great deal of trouble. Now I’m going to cause you a great deal of pain.”
Quick as thought he moved forward and smashed Flap in the head with the butt of his rifle. Flap collapsed.
The captain drove a kick at Jake Grafton that caught him right where his rib was broken. He almost passed out from the pain.
When he came to his senses he was lying almost across Flap. The captain was talking. “Been into the weapons, I see. What else have you done?” He kicked Jake again, but he took the blow mostly on his shoulder.
Jake felt for Flap’s left arm. He found it. The sleeve was loose. The knife came free in his hand.
Another kick. “What have you done in there? Answer me!”
As the foot flashed out again Jake grabbed it and pulled. Off balance, the captain fell. Jake scrambled to his knees and went for him but the man was too quick. He was coming off the ground so Jake slashed with the knife, a vicious, desperate backhand.
The captain staggered back. Through all the kicks he had kept his rifle in his left hand. Now he dropped it and grabbed his stomach with both hands as a shriek of agony escaped him.
His guts spilled out.
The captain fell to the ground. Jake crawled toward him and stabbed, again and again and again.
When the captain went limp Jake slashed at his throat for good measure, then rolled over moaning. He couldn’t breathe. His side!
The captain quivered. In a haze of pain, Jake stabbed the knife into his chest and left it there.
Somehow he got to his feet.
Le Beau seemed only partially conscious. Jake grabbed him by the back of the neck of his flight suit and heaved. The Marine slid about two feet.
Jake needed both hands.
The boat dock. He had to get Flap to the boat.
No way but to drag him.
In a haze of pain, struggling to breathe, he pulled. He paused occasionally to glance over his shoulder, because he was dragging him backward. Right by the lights of the village.
Someone would see him and shoot him.
He didn’t care.
How he made the journey he didn’t know. Flap stirred several times but he didn’t come to.
Finally he had the Marine on the boards of the dock. In a supreme effort he got him over the side of the cabin cruiser onto its deck.
He paused, breathing raggedly, not getting enough air but sucking hard anyway.
Cast off. He had to cast off.
Somehow he remembered the other boats. He got out on the dock and fumbled with their ropes.
The knife! Damn, he had left it sticking in the captain.
He managed to untie all of the ropes except one, which was knotted too tight for his fingers. In his pain and anxiety he forgot all about the second knife that Flap carried.
The ropes for the cabin cruiser came loose easily.
Jake got aboard just as the current began to ease it away from the dock. Those other boats that were free from their moorings were already drifting.
The grenades.
He fumbled in his chest pocket for one. He pulled the pin and held it as the distance increased.
Now.
He let the spoon fly, gritted his teeth and heaved. It hit on the dock, bounced once, then rolled into the moored boat.
Jake sagged down just as it went off.
The noise would bring the pirates. Maybe this would be a good time to see if the engine in this boat can be started.
Fumbling with the switches by the helm, he found the one for the battery. A little light came on. There was a button just beside it. Here goes nothing!
Please, God.
The engine turned over.
He jabbed the button in and held it. Grind, grind, grind as he played with the throttle.
A choke. Maybe there was a choke. Desperately he felt around the panel.
He found it and pulled it out. The engine ground several more times, then caught. He inched the throttle forward from idle and spun the helm.
He had the boat headed downriver when the first bullets thudded in.
One man shooting. No, two.
He hunkered by the wheel and fed in full throttle.
The boat accelerated nicely. He slewed it and craned his head to see. The banks of the river were even darker than the water.
Stay in the middle.
More bullets whapping in. The windshield in front of Jake shattered. Then something hit him in the shoulder, drove him forward into the panel. Somehow he kept his feet under him.
The shooting stopped. He was rounding a bend. He got himself into the seat behind the wheel.
How far to the sea? Would the pirates follow?
He was worrying about that when he heard the explosion, a roar that grew and grew and grew, then died abruptly.
His head swam and he worked desperately hard to breathe. Somehow he stayed conscious and kept the boat in the channel.
Eventually the darkness of the trees on the riversides merged with the night and the boat began to pitch and roll. The ocean. They were out of the river.
There was a bungee cord dangling from the wheel. With the last of his strength Jake managed to hook the free end to the bottom of the chair where he had been sitting.
He rolled Flap over to check on him. He had a terrible knot on his forehead and the pupil of one eye was completely dilated. Concussion.
“Hey, Flap. It’s me, Jake.”
The Marine moved. His lips worked. Jake put his head down to hear. “Horowitz had a brother. Tell him…Tell him…”
Just what Jake was to tell him Flap didn’t say.
Jake was so tired. He lay down beside Flap.
The boat ran out of fuel an hour later. It was rolling amid the swells of a sun-flecked blue sea when a pilot of an A-7 from Columbia spotted it. The crewman the helicopter lowered found Jake Grafton and Flap Le Beau lying side by side in the cockpit.
23
Jake woke up in a room with cream-colored walls and ceiling, in a bed with crisp white sheets. A sunbeam shone like a spotlight through a window. An IV was dripping into a vein in his left arm.
Hospital.
His curiosity satisfied, he drifted off to sleep again. When he next awoke a nurse was there taking his pulse. “Welcome back to the land of the living,” she said and lowered his wrist back to the bed. She annotated a clipboard, then gave him a grin.
“Where am I?”
“Honolulu. Trippler Army Hospital.”
“Hawaii?”
“Yes. You’ve been here almost a day now. You’re just coming out of the recovery room.”
“Le Beau? Marine captain. He here too?”
“Yes. He’s still in recovery.”
“How is he?”
“Still asleep. He’s had an operation. You’ve had one too, but yours didn’t take quite as long.”
“When he wakes up, I want to talk to him. Okay?”
“We’ll see. You take that up with the doctor when he comes around. He should be here in about thirty minutes. Is there anything I can do for you?”
“No.”
She busied herself arranging the sheets and checking that he had fresh water in a glass by the bed. He lay taking it in, enjoying the brightness and the cleanliness.
After a bit curiosity stirred him. “What day is it?”
“This is Wednesday.”
“We got shot down…December nine. What day…is it now?”
“The sixteenth of December.”
“We missed Australia.”
“What was that?”
“Nothing,” he murmured, and closed his eyes again. He was very tired.
He was still pretty foggy when he talked to the doctor, either later that morning or that afternoon. The sunbeam had moved. He noticed that.
“We operated on your left side. Your lung collapsed. Lucky you didn’t bleed to death. And of course you were shot in the shoulder. By some miracle the bullet missed your collarbone. Went clean through.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’re also fighting a raging infection. You aren’t out of the woods yet, sailor.”
“Le Beau, how’s he doing?”
“He’s critical. He lost a lot of blood.”
“He gonna make it?”
“We think so.”
“When he wakes up, I want to see him.”
“We’ll see.”
“Bring him in here. This room’s big enough. Or take me into his room.”
“We’ll see.”
“How’d we get here, anyway?”
“The ship medevaced you two to Clark and the Air Force flew you here.”
“I may not be out of the woods, but I’m out of the jungle.”
The next day Flap was wheeled into the room. His bed was placed beside Jake’s. A bandage covered half his head. But he grinned when he saw Jake out of his one unobstructed eye.
“Hey, shipmate.”
“As I live and breathe,” said Flap Le Beau as the nurses hovered around hooking up everything. “The neighborhood is integrating. Better put the house up for sale while you still can.”
“If you don’t stop that racist stuff I’m gonna start calling you Chocolate.”
“Chocolate Le Beau,” he said, savoring it. “I like it. They hung that Flap tag on me because I talk a lot. My real name is Clarence.”
“I know. Middle initial O. What’s that stand for?”
“Odysseus. I picked it out in college after I read the Odyssey. Clarence O. Le Beau. Got a ring to it, don’t it?” He directed the question to one of the nurses, who looked sort of sweet.
“It is very nice,” she said and smiled.
“So how you feeling?” Jake asked.
“Like a week-old dog turd that’s been run over by a truck. And you?”
“Not quite that chipper.”
When the nurses were leaving Flap told the sweet one, “Come back and see us anytime, dearest.”
“I will, Clarence O.”
When they were gone, Flap told Jake, “Don’t worry. I’ll get you one too. Trust me.”
“So what’s wrong with your head?”
“Concussion and blood clot. They had to drill a hole to relieve the pressure. Another hole in my head—just what I needed, eh?”
“The captain laid you out with a butt stroke. I killed him.”
“I figured that or we wouldn’t be here. But some other time, huh? I don’t want to even think about that shit.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s for lunch? Have they told you?”
“No.”
“I am really ready for some good grits.”
“Guess we missed Australia.”
“These things happen. Don’t sweat it. You can make it up to me somehow.”
The following day they were visited by a Navy commander, an officer on the staff of Commander In Chief Pacific—CINCPAC. He interviewed both men, recorded their stories, then when they tired, left while they napped. He came back for another hour just before dinner and asked questions.
“If I can do anything for you gentlemen, give me a call.”
He left a card with his name and telephone number on the stands beside each of their beds.
They had lost a lot of weight. When the nurses first sat Jake up he was amazed at how skinny his legs and arms were.
Improvement was slow at first, then quicker. By the fifth day Jake was walking to the bathroom. He bragged, so Flap got himself out of bed and went when the nurses weren’t there. He had trouble with his balance but he made it to the john and back by holding on to things.
On the eighth day they went for a hike, holding on to each other, to see what they could see. A nurse caught them and made them retrace their steps.
The hospital was half-empty. “Not like it used to be. You were the first gunshot victim we saw in two months,” one nurse told Jake.
“Not like the good old days,” he replied.
“They weren’t good days,” he was told. “Thank God the war is over.”
On the day after Christmas they demanded clothes. That afternoon an orderly brought them cardboard boxes containing some of their clothes that the guys on the ship had packed and sent. The orderly helped Jake open his. Inside he found underwear, uniforms, shoes, insignia.
As he was inspecting a set of khakis, the thought went through his head that he should discard this shirt and buy another.
Where had that thought come from? He was getting out—out of the Navy!
He sat on the edge of the bed holding the shirt, looking at it but not seeing it. Out. To do what? What could he conceivably do as a civilian that would mean as
much to him as what he had spent the last six years of his life doing?
He was a naval officer. Lieutenant, United States Navy.
That meant something.
He was digging in the box when he found a letter. It was from the Real McCoy.
Hey Shipmate,
When you read this you will probably be getting spruced up to go to the club or chase women. Some guys will do about anything to get out of a little work.
This boat was like a damn funeral parlor the night you and Flap didn’t come back. The mood improved a thousand percent when they announced that the chopper was inbound with both of you aboard. The captain and CAG and Skipper Haldane were there on the flight deck with the medicos when the chopper landed, along with a couple hundred other guys.
After the docs got you guys stabilized and you left in the COD, the captain got on the 1-MC and said some real nice things about you. It was pretty maudlin. I forgot most of it so I won’t try to repeat it here, but suffice it to say that every swinging dick on this boat is glad you two clowns made it.
Australia is on. TS for you. We’ll party on without you, but you’ll be missed.
Your friend,
Real
Two days later Jake decked himself out in a white uniform and Flap selected a set of khakis. They strolled the grounds. The days were Hawaii balmy with clouds every afternoon. One day they took a taxi to the golf course and rented a golf cart.
Out on the fairways they went over the whole adventure again, little by little, a scene here, a scene there. Gradually they dropped it and went on to other subjects, like women and politics and flying.
One day Flap brought the subject up again, for what proved to be the last time. “So where is my slasher?”
“I think I left it sticking in the captain. But I might have just dropped it somewhere. It’s a little hazy.”
“That was my best knife.”
“Tough.”
“I designed it. It was custom-made for me. Cost me two hundred bucks.”
“Order another.”
Flap laughed. “I can see you are oozing remorse over my loss.”
“To be frank, I don’t give a shit about your knife.”
“You’re as full of tact as ever. That’s one of the qualities that will take you far, Grafton. Ol’ Mister Smooth.”
“And the horse you rode in on, Clarence O.”
The Intruders Page 37