The Intruders

by Stephen Coonts

  “It’s my turn to drive this friggin’ cart. You’re always hoggin’ the drivin’.”

  “That’s because I’m the pilot. Why don’t you tell me about some of the ugly women you’ve run across in your adventures?

  ” “Well, by God, I just will.” And he did.

  In the evenings there was little to do, so Jake wrote letters. His first was to his former roommate, Sammy Lundeen. He hit the highlights of this last cruise and devoted a whole page to crossing the line. In the finest traditions of naval aviation, he seriously downplayed his and Flap’s role in the pirate adventure. Luck, luck, luck—he and Flap had survived due to the grotesque ineptitude of the villains and despite their own extraordinarily stupid mistakes, mistakes that would have wrung tears from the eyes of any competent aviator. All in all, the letter was quite a literary effort, first-class fiction. That thought didn’t occur to Jake, of course, when he reread it before stuffing it into an envelope. His buddy Lundeen would chuckle, Jake knew, and shake his head sadly. Good ol’ Sammy.

  Instinctively he adopted a completely different tone when he wrote to Tiger Cole, his last BN during the Vietnam War. There was no bullshit in Tiger Cole, and no one who knew him would try to lay the smelly stuff on him. You gave it to that grim warrior straight and unadorned.

  He ended the letter this way:

  I have never thought of myself as a professional. Never. I’ve been a guy who went into the service because there was a war and I’ve merely tried to do my best until the time came for me to go back to the real world. Still, I have watched so many pros since I have been in the Navy—you included— that I think I’m beginning to see how the thing is done. And why. I hope so, anyway. So I’ve decided to stay in.

  The decision hasn’t been easy. I guess no important commitment is.

  Whenever I get back to the mainland, I’ll give you a call. I’ll probably take some leave. Maybe swing by Pensacola if you’re still there and we can swill a beer at the club.

  Hang tough, shipmate.

  Your friend,

  Jake

  One day Jake penned a letter to Callie. Then he put it in the drawer beside his bed. Each day he got it out, read it through and debated whether or not he should mail it.

  She probably had another boyfriend. There was always that possibility. Jake Grafton had no intention of playing the fool, with this or any other woman. So he kept the letter formal, as if he were writing to a great-aunt. He omitted any reference to his adventure with the pirates or the fact that he was just now residing in a hospital room. But on the second page he said this:

  I’ve decided to stay in the Navy. It has been a tough decision and I’ve had to really wrestle with it. The arguments for getting out are many and you know most of them. The Navy is a large bureaucracy; anyone who thinks the bureaucracy will miss them when they are gone is kidding himself.

  Still, this is where I belong. I like the people, I can do the work, I believe the work is important. Of course the Navy is not for everyone, but it is, I believe, the best place for me. I know full well that there is nothing that I can do here that others cannot do better, but here I can make a contribution.

  He closed with a few pleasantries and the hope that all was fine with her.

  On New Year’s Eve he got it out again to read it through carefully.

  The tone was wrong, all wrong.

  He added a P.S.

  As I reread this letter it occurs to me that I’ve made a very stupid mistake. The last few months I’ve been so busy worrying that you might not love me as much as I love you that I lost sight of what love is. Love by its very nature opens you up to getting burned.

  I love you, Callie. You were a rock to hang on to the last year of the war, the one sane person in an insane world. And you’ve been a rock to hang on to these last six months. You’ve been in my thoughts and in my dreams.

  If I love you more than you love me, so be it. I’m tough enough to love and lose. But I just wanted you to know how much I care.

  As ever,

  Jake

  In the third week of January he and Flap moved to the BOQ. They continued to visit the hospital on an outpatient basis. Flap took daily physical therapy to overcome the effects of his head injury. The knife wound in his side drained slowly and healed stubbornly. Eventually it did heal, leaving a bad scar.

  Jake merely needed a checkup occasionally. His collapsed lung and the resultant infection had been more serious than the bullet hole in his shoulder, which healed quickly, yet by now he was well on his way to a complete recovery. He went with Flap every morning anyway and kibitzed as the Marine went through his exercises. Then they went to the golf course and rode around in a golf cart.

  One day they rented clubs. They merely slapped at the balls, since neither man could swing a club with any vigor. Slap the ball a hundred feet, using mostly arms and wrists, get in the cart and drive over to it, slap the thing again. It was crazy, but it felt fine.

  After that they played daily. Gradually the shoulders and ribs loosened up and they swung more freely, but neither man had ever played much golf and neither was very good.

  They were standing on the carrier pier at Pearl Harbor when Columbia arrived in early February.

  “Look who has returned!” the Real McCoy shouted when they walked into the ready room. “The prodigal sons are back!”

  “We only came aboard for a change of underwear. It’s been hell, golf every day, hot women every night…”

  They were surrounded by people shaking their hands and welcoming them back. When the mob scene had subsided to a low roar, the Real asked Jake, “By any chance did you bring a copy of the Wall Street Journal?”

  “I hate to give you the bad news, roomie, but the market is down a thousand points this morning. They’re talking about a depression.”

  “Aah…,” said the Real, searching Jake’s face.

  “Millionaires are leaping out of windows even as we speak.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  After lunch Jake went to his stateroom with McCoy. He crawled into the top bunk and let out a long sigh. “Feels so good.”

  “Got something to show you,” the Real said. From his desk he brought forth a series of aerial photos. “We took these before we smacked that hijacked Cuban freighter. See that big blast area—that’s where the pile was that you and Flap blew up.”

  “You guys bombed the Cuban ship?”

  “Oh yes. The government of Indonesia thought those weapons might go to some of their own indigenous revolutionaries, so they asked for our help before we even offered it.”

  “I never saw anything about it in the papers.”

  “They never told the press.”

  “I’ll be darned.”

  That night the entire squadron went to the O Club en masse. It was an epic party, complete with a letter the next day from the C.O. of the base to the captain of Columbia complaining about rowdy behavior and demanding damages. That night Jake and Flap slept in their bunks aboard ship.

  Before the ship sailed, Jake spent a quiet moment with Lieutenant Colonel Haldane. “I’d like to stay in the Navy, Skipper. I want to withdraw my resignation.”

  Haldane smiled and offered his hand. Jake shook it.

  “There’s one other thing,” Jake said slowly. “I hear that some of the guys are going to get some traps the first day out of port just in case they need to fly during the transit to the States. I’d need too many to get current, but I’d take it as a personal favor if you’d let me and Flap get one.”

  “I need up chits from the flight surgeon.”

  “That’s the rub. I think I can get one but I don’t think they’ll give Flap an up. The doctors at Trippler want him to do more physical therapy. He still has some balance problems.”

  “According to that report we received from CINCPAC, he took a rifle butt in the head.”

  “Yessir. One hell of a butt stroke. He had lost a lot of blood by that time and didn’t have the reflexes
to minimize the impact.”

  “Well, you and Flap take your medical files to the flight surgeon and have him look you over. Then have him call me.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Somehow it worked out. Jake and Flap rode the catapult two hours after Columbia cleared Pearl. By some miracle he didn’t question he got a plane full of gas, so he had to burn down or dump before he could come back into the pattern.

  They yanked and banked and shouted over the ICS as they did tight turns around the tops of cumulus clouds. Jake managed a loop and a Cuban eight before Flap begged for mercy. He was dizzy.

  Jake smoked into the break at five hundred knots. The air boss never peeped. Better yet, Jake snagged a three-wire.

  On the morning of the fly-off Jake took the Pri-Fly duty. All the planes of the air wing were to be launched: the crews were selected strictly on the basis of seniority. Tonight they would be home with wives and children and sweethearts. Jake and Flap were, of course, not flying off. They were riding the ship into port. Flap had an appointment at the Oakland Naval Hospital and Jake was catching a commercial flight to Oak Harbor via Seattle to pick up his car, then he was taking a month’s leave. He thought he would head for Virginia by way of Chicago. Maybe look Callie up, see what she was up to. At the end of the month he would report again to Tiny Dick Donovan at VA-128.

  The fly-off went well. One by one every plane on the ship taxied to the catapults and was shot aloft. They rendezvoused in divisions over the ship and headed east.

  When the last plane was gone and the angel helicopter had settled onto the angle and shut down, the ship secured from flight quarters. Jake went down to the strangely empty flight deck and walked around one last time.

  Not really. He would be back. If not this ship, then another. Once again he savored the oily aroma of steam seeping up from the catapults, felt the heat as it mixed with the salty sea breeze.

  He was wandering the deck when Bosun Muldowski approached. He stunned Jake with a salute. Jake returned it.

  “Hear you’re staying in, Mr. Grafton.”

  “Yep. Your example shamed me into it.”

  Muldowski laughed. “It’s a good life,” he said. “Beats eight to five anywhere. Maybe if I had found the right woman and had some kids…But you can’t live on maybes. Didn’t work out that way. You gotta live your life one day at a time. That’s the way God fixed it up. Today do what you do best and let tomorrow take care of tomorrow.”

  Jake was packing in his stateroom when the ship docked at the Alameda carrier pier. The Real McCoy had flown off with the Marines—he had earned it. McCoy’s steel footlockers sporting new padlocks sat one atop the other by the door. His desk was clean and nothing hung in his closet. His bunk was stripped and the sheets turned in.

  Jake had also turned in his sheets and blankets. Last night he had packed the suitcase he was taking on leave—now he was stuffing everything else into the parachute bags. The suitcase he had purchased in Hawaii. The padlocks for the bags lay on the desk. Net gain after one eight-month cruise: one suitcase and some new scars.

  The engagement ring he had purchased for Callie oh those many months ago was the last item left in his desk safe. He held it in his hand and wondered what to do with it. The suitcase might get stolen or lost by the airline, shuffled off to Buffalo or Pago Pago or Timbuktu. For lack of a better option, he put the ring in his shirt pocket and buttoned the pocket.

  The telephone rang. “Lieutenant Grafton, sir.”

  “Mr. Grafton, this is the duty officer at the officers’ brow. You have a visitor.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, sir. You need to come sign her in and escort her.”

  “Okay, but who is this pers—?” He stopped because he was talking to a dead phone. The duty officer had hung up.

  There was obviously some mistake. He didn’t know a soul in the San Francisco Bay area. He glanced at his new watch, guaranteed to be waterproof to a depth of three hundred feet or his money back. He had four hours to catch the plane from the Oakland airport. Plenty of time.

  He grabbed his ball cap and headed for the ceremonial quarterdeck at the head of the officers’ brow. It was on the hangar deck, which was the scene of hundreds of sailors coming and going on a variety of errands, most of them frivolous. Crowds of sailors stood on the aircraft elevators shouting to people on the pier below. Near the enlisted brow a band was tooting merrily.

  He saw her standing, looking curiously around when he was still a hundred feet away.

  Callie McKenzie!

  As he walked toward her she spotted him. She beamed.

  “Hello, Jake.”

  He couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “You’ve lost some weight,” she said.

  “Been sick.”

  “Oh. Well, aren’t you glad to see me?”

  “Thunderstruck. I’m speechless.”

  She looked even better than he remembered. As he stared her eyes danced with amusement and a smile grew on her face.

  “I never expected to see you here,” he told her. “Not in a million years.”

  “Life is full of surprises.”

  “Isn’t it, though?”

  He was rooted where he stood, unable to take his eyes off her and unsure what to do next. Why was she here? Why hadn’t she written in five months? Then a thought stuck him: “Did you come with someone?” he asked and glanced around, half expecting to see her mother, or even some man.

  “No.” She reached out and touched his arm. “All these sailors are staring at us. Can you sign me in so we can go somewhere and talk?”

  Jake flushed. “Oh, yes, sure.”

  The officer of the deck and quartermaster of the watch grinned shamelessly, enjoying Jake’s obvious discomfort. Jake scribbled his name beside Callie’s in the visitors’ log, then steered her away with two fingers on her elbow.

  “Let’s go up to the flight deck. Fine view of the bay area from up there.”

  Indeed, the view from the flight deck was spectacular. The San Francisco skyline, Treasure Island, airliners coming and going at San Francisco International and Oakland—the panorama would have frozen most people who had spent the largest part of the last eight months looking at empty ocean dead in their tracks. However Jake Grafton was too acutely aware of the presence of Callie McKenzie to give the scene more than a glance.

  “How are your folks?” he asked finally, breaking the silence.

  “They’re fine. And yours?”

  “Okay. Almost called you a time or two.”

  “And I almost wrote you. I should have. And you should have called.”

  “Why didn’t you write?”

  “I didn’t want to influence your decision. To stay in or get out, what to do with your life. This was your decision, Jake, not mine.”

  “Well, I made it. I’m staying in.”

  “Why?”

  Jake Grafton ran his fingers through his hair. “I was looking for something. Turns out I had it all along and just didn’t realize it.”

  “What were you looking for?”

  “Something worth doing. Something that made a difference. The war was such a mess…I guess that I lost sight of what we’re all about here. It’s more than ships and planes and cats and traps. I realized that finally.”

  “I always thought that what you did was important.”

  “Your dad didn’t.”

  “Dad? I love him dearly but this is my life, not his.”

  “So what are you going to do with your life?”

  She didn’t answer. She lowered her head and began walking slowly. Jake stayed with her. When she got to the bow of the ship she stood looking across the water at San Francisco with the wind playing in her hair.

  “I guess I’m like most modern women. I want a family and a career. Languages have always fascinated me, and I have found I love to teach. That’s the big plan, but some of it is contingent.”

  “On what?”

  “On you.”

 
“Well, I don’t think that’s very fair. After all, lady, you shoved me out into the cold to make up my own mind.”

  “You were never out in the cold, Jake. There hasn’t been an hour in the last eight months that I wasn’t thinking about you. I’ve read and reread your letters until I almost wore out the paper. Especially that last letter. I think I was wondering too, wondering if you loved me as much as I loved you.”

  “You were always with me too,” he confessed, and grinned. “Maybe an hour or two now and then you slipped away, but most of the time you were there.”

  Her hand found his. They began strolling along the deck. The breeze was fresh and crisp.

  “So why did you come here?” he asked.

  “I came to get married.”

  He gaped. It was like a kick in the stomach. He had thought… He jerked his hand from her grasp.

  “Who’s the lucky guy?” he managed.

  “You,” she said, her head cocked slightly to one side, her lips twisting into a grin.

  “Me?”

  “Who else could it be? I love you more than words can tell, Jacob Lee Grafton.”

  “You want to marry me?”

  She laughed. He had always liked her laugh. “Do you want me to get down on one knee and propose?”

  “I accept,” he told her and seized both her hands. “Where and when?”

  “This afternoon. Anywhere.”

  “My God, woman! This is sudden. Are you sure?”

  “I’ve been thinking about this for a year,” she told him. “I’m absolutely certain.”

  “Well, I’ll be…” He took off his cap and ran his fingers through his hair. Then he remembered the ring. He pulled it from his shirt pocket, looked at it, then put it on her finger.

  Now she was surprised. “You knew I was coming?”

  “No. I bought that for you over a year ago. Been carrying it ever since.”

  “Oh, Jake,” she said and wrapped her arms around his neck. Her lips found his.

  He finally broke the embrace and seized her hand. “Come on. We’ll need a best man. My BN is still aboard. He and I were going to have lunch together.”

  The quickest way to Flap’s stateroom was into the catwalk behind the island, then into the 0-3 level and down. On the catwalk Jake happened to glance at the pier. There was a pink Cadillac convertible parked at the foot of the officers’ brow with four women in it.