by Joe Poyer
Keilty grinned at her. 'Tong-war stuff; I thought the Reds cleaned them out when they took China ...'
`No,' Tina interrupted. 'They turned them to their own use. They are not Communists as much as they are gangsters doing the Communists' dirty work, and they are used in Singapore only when they want someone very badly. Now they are only gansters and work for whoever will pay them.'
`So. Things are beginning to clear up a little,' Keilty said thoughtfully. 'Well, this is your town – how do you suggest we get safe transportation? We can't go back to the hotel tonight ... but there is somewhere that we can go and we had better go fast.'
`You have the gun?' Tina said quietly. 'We can still take a cab.'
Keilty laughed again, kissed her quickly, and started walking to the cab stand ahead.
`How do you know so much about the tong?'
Èvery Chinese knows about the tong . . . and my parents still live in Canton. I visited them two years ago.'
They came up to the cab stand and slid quickly into the first cab.
`Hotel Metropoli,' Keilty said, leaning across the seat, 'and don't touch that radio.' He pressed the gun into the driver's neck. 'Move.'
Keilty banged on Rawingson's door loudly, then banged again. He heard shuffling, the click of a lamp going on, and muffled curses. The door opened a crack, then Rawingson pulled it all the way open.
`What the hell are you doing here
?'
Keilty pushed in and swung the door shut quickly.
`Howdy, Pete, bed so early?'
Rawingson wrapped his robe more tightly around him and planted his hands on his hips. '
What are you up to .. . ?'
`Never mind the small talk. We've got some pretty bad trouble.' Keilty flopped down on the couch, pulling Tina after him. She huddled into his arm and stared at the imposing figure of the white-haired admiral.
`First of all, pick up that phone and get some marine guards up here, fast.'
Rawingson, face incredulous, started to protest, but Keilty cut him off. 'We were kidnapped from my hotel tonight about seven – by the Communists.'
`What the hell!' Rawingson exploded. He didn't waste time in questions or disbelief, but crossed the room. The phone rang just as he reached to pick it up. He answered and listened for a moment, his face screwing up into a frown.
Àll right, keep it quiet. Not a word to anyone, or else. I have him here right now. Tell Commander Peterson I want the guard doubled around the building and I want four armed marines here at my suite in plain clothes – five minutes. No,' he said crossly, 'I'll explain to him later.' Rawingson hung up, opened the drawer and took out a .45 Colt automatic, checked the clip and dropped it into the pocket of his kimono.
He took the chair across the room and stared at the two on the couch.
'That was Operations. They just got a call from the consul's office. There is a warrant out for your arrest. Car theft and assault with a deadly weapon. What the hell's going on?'
Keilty laughed and crossed the room to the bar and mixed three stiff drinks. 'That, my friend, is a mighty long story.'
Briefly, Keilty ran through the events of the past hours. `So, Pete, there is either a leak somewhere, or else they want to get their hands on both Charlie and me.
'Huumph,' Rawingson snorted. 'Just you would be enough. Plenty of dolphins around.' He drained the glass and stared out the broad window morosely. `The only night I get a chance to get to bed early, and you have to come banging in here with some wild tale and every comic-strip oriental bandit in hot pursuit.'
`They are not comic-strip bandits, Admiral, they are very dangerous men,' Tina said quietly from the couch.
`She's right, Pete. I've got a bullet hole to prove it.' He opened his jacket; his shirt was stained red where the bullet had grazed his side. Tina jumped from the couch and was across to the bathroom before he could say more.
While Tina cleaned the slight wound and bandaged it, Rawingson made some more phone calls. When he finished and hung up the phone, a knock sounded on the door.
Both men were instantly on their feet, guns in hands. Keilty pushed Tina towards the bedroom.
`Yes,' Rawingson called.
'Sergeant Bennington, sir. Operations sent us'
`Just a minute.' Rawingson went to the door, while Keilty stepped back into the alcove where he would have clear fire on the door. Rawingson opened it a crack, then flung it open all the way . . . and sighed when he saw that the faces were American. The sergeant saluted and showed his I.D. Rawingson positioned the marines: one to the lobby, one to the end of the hall, and the other two outside the door.
When the door closed behind them, Rawingson turned to Keilty. 'I've set up the meeting for seven hundred hours. It looks like we had better shift into high gear. The dolphin will be brought aboard and the Vigilant will sail immediately.' Keilty was about to tell him that Charlie already knew where the sub was, when Tina came back into the living room.
Ì suggest,' Rawingson said, looking at the girl's worn face, 'that the young lady had better get some sleep.' He nodded at Keilty.
Keilty agreed and ushered the girl into the master bedroom. 'You're safe now, Tina,' he said quietly. 'Get undressed and get some sleep. I'll see that you're taken care of.'
She reached up and drew his head down, kissing him long and deeply, then leaned against him for a moment. He brushed
her dark hair back out of her eyes and kissed her on the tip of the nose. 'Sleep, sweetheart, and don't worry.'
He came back out into the living room, where Rawingson had fresh drinks waiting. 'We'
re not waiting for tomorrow. I've got Hallan and Hutchins both coming in an hour —
Washington wants us to move fast.
`Who is she?' He switched subjects abruptly.
`Who?'
`The girl,' Rawingson replied impatiently. 'Who is she and where did you meet her?'
Keilty grinned. 'Just a friend. I met her last night and she was waiting in my suite tonight when those thugs shoved me in the door. I told you.'
'Yes, but where did you pick her up is what I want to know.' 'I didn't. Not in that sense anyway. Peter Owterry, you remember him, the New Zealander ...
'Yes, go on.' Rawingson waved his hand impatiently. Ànyway,' Keilty continued, looking reproachfully at the
admiral, 'he introduced me to her and I took her out.' `Had you made a date for tonight?'
'No, but ...'
`That's what I thought. She goes into custody as soon as she wakes up.'
Keilty finished the drink. 'I was going to ask you to take care of her. It's for darned sure that she can't stay in Singapore.'
`Well, we'll take care of her for the time being and she'll be perfectly safe.'
The phone rang again and Rawingson picked it up. As he listened, his face turned red with rage. He swore furiously and slammed the phone down. Still swearing, he started to pace the room.
`Now what?' Keilty asked.
`They tried to break into the Military Mission building but they arrived just as the additional sentries came up.' Rawingson picked up the phone and dialed a number. 'They didn't get inside the building. Go tell the boys outside to pass Hallan and Hutchins through. We're leaving as soon as they get here.'
When Keilty returned, he found Rawingson on the phone again. Finally, he hung up and swung around. 'That was Honolulu. They said, move immediately.' He swore loudly, then calmed himself with visible effort. 'They want the sub found yesterday. But while finding it, we aren't supposed to let it know it's being hunted.'
'When you do find it, then what?'
`Correction, when you find it . . . remember that two hundred thousand. They say, destroy it immediately.'
Keilty grinned. 'In that case relax. Charlie already knows where it is.'
Rawingson was quiet for a long minute, then: 'I should expect anything else?' he said in a tired voice.
CHAPTER TEN
It was close to 3 a.m. when the five-ton tru
ck wheeled up to the cargo stage, dimly lit by lights from the Vigilant's bridge. Keilty came around to the gate just as the new steel semi-tank that had been built for Charlie was unloaded by a forklift. Keilty climbed onto the running board and directed the driver to the stage.
Keilty hooked the slings himself and patted Charlie's broad back. He climbed onto the tank step and shouted for the operator to lift them onto the ship. The slings came up taut and the tank lifted off the pier, swung free, and moved upwards slowly. The gray steel hull of the cruiser slipped past and they were level with, then above the rail. From his vantage point, Keilty could see the ring of marines in position at the end of and along the pier. A hastily mounted machine-gun emplacement faced the dock area at the end of the pier, and two large searchlights, dismounted from Vigilant's bridge, illuminated the area with stark, white light. He ran his hand over Charlie's rough hide again to calm him. The dolphin lay half supported by the shallow water of the tank.
The winch moved them over the deck, past the battery of missiles, shrouded in canvas but pointing angrily to the sky as if straining at their mooring damps to be released. The.
No. 2 ammunition hold yawned under them and they began the descent into the black maw. As they passed the hatch edge, several batteries of lamps flashed on, and the tank settled gently to the rubber-tired truck. Keilty jumped off and unfastened the chain with the aid of two ratings, and the slings were pulled out of the hold and the clamshell doors boomed shut above them. The hold was a large rectangular area, two decks deep, and was directly over the main magazine.
An electric tractor backed up; the hitch of the truck was snapped tight and it was towed away toward the hospital. Rawingson and Keilty had deemed this the safest place for the dolphin, deep in the interior of the ship, and Captain Whittlson had readily agreed. Keilty rode along as they passed down the wide steel corridors with their maze of brightly colored overhead pipes. The Vigilant was a fairly new ship, converted to missiles. She had been one of the last built in the Clyde ship-yards in the early fifties, and she was built well. She was more spacious, faster, and better armored than her World War II predecessors. The hospital was a large double cabin amidship, below the water line, and extremely well equipped.
Keilty settled Charlie into one of the medical bays in the office and filled the tank, taking the strain off the dolphin's internal organs. He had already explained the situation to Charlie before taking him from the Military Mission pool. Charlie's first question had been about the gunfire he had heard. He didn't know what it was, but had guessed that it was something that might possibly harm him.
Keilty had patiently explained what had happened since he had left earlier that evening.
He went into detail over the reasons for the kidnapping and told Charlie point-blank that it appeared that the Vietnamese had mounted the attack in an effort to kill him. He pointed out the desperation behind the attack – a handful of agents against a U.S. military post.
Charlie had slipped off the board without a word and had slowly coursed up and down the pool for several minutes before coming back to it.
`Why do they want to destroy me?' he had asked, puzzlement and hurt in his mechanical voice.
'Because they are scared,' Keilty answered point-blank. 'This whole business is as old as mankind. One group trying to force another to believe and act as they believe, and the other group resisting. Human history is composed of these ridiculous counter-marchings to and fro. And we are as guilty as the Communists. Less than thirty years ago, it was the Germans and the Japanese. The Germans, under the guise of National Socialism, trying to force other people in their part of the world to believe as they believed. They were so adamant about others accepting their beliefs that close to ten million people died. In this part of the world, the Japanese did it for the sake of Japanese aggrandizement and again millions more died. Now, they are our best allies.
'In the history of my country, the United States, it has happened four times in less than two hundred years – the War of Independence that "freed" us from England, the same country we are helping today; the Civil War, between two sections of our country; the Spanish-American War, because we believed that the people of a small island, Cuba, should be free to decide their own fate; and South Vietnam where we thought we were helping and stayed long past the time we were doing any good.'
Keilty paused and gazed morosely at his big hands. 'It all seems futile in the light of later events. Now we are dealing with weapons that can kill a million people at one relatively inexpensive blow. We've come a long ways, haven't we?
`But I believe that we are fighting for something that perhaps will make all this worthwhile – the idea that anyone is free to come and go, to earn his living and be happy without a collective government telling him what to do. Government is the worst and the best invention of man. It depends on how it is used. The Communists, broadly, want to use it to force people to live in a way that is completely unnatural to human beings. In a word, they actually believe in the innate goodness of human beings, which in a way is true. But humans are also very opportunistic and will take advantage of any situation that they can. Communism just will not work. But they believe it will. They believe they are right and we believe we are right. Trouble is,' he finished, 'I believe we are a little righter than they.'
When he finished, Charlie was silent, looking up at the hunched figure with troubled eyes. Keilty was again struck by the dolphin's humanness. The intelligence lying behind the black pupils. Charlie could feel the emotions that vied for expression, for mastery of the man, and suddenly he realized that Keilty was just as troubled, just as uncertain as he was. When he had realized this, he began to look at the man with new eyes. Keilty did not any more know for sure what was right than he did, but he was doing a job he felt had to be done. He fumbled for a moment for something that Jack had once told him. He hadn't understood then, but it was clear now. Jack had said that nothing was ever clearly black and white, that there were innumerable shades of gray between the extremes, and it was each man's own fate to decide which shade of gray he would adopt for his own.
Some would believe they had picked the right hue: others would never be sure. The latter were the great ones, Jack had said. They did what they had to, never knowing if they were right or wrong, but doing it because they had made the choice.
And of a sudden, it was clear to him that earth was a very small planet. For thousands of years, man had been the dominant life form, only because he had intelligence and had no intelligent competition. But now, Charlie realized, his people were shortly to take their place, hopefully beside man, at man's insistence. They had to, or they would perish.
Man was also moving into the sea. For a moment, pure terror washed through him at the thought. And for the rest of his life, this terror was never completely to leave him. Man could either be an enemy or a friend. But how to be a friend, unless they met man with a force equal to his? For man had always to dominate. It was engrained in his genes. Again the question: degenerate or advance? He knew that the answer must not be degenerate. He had already taken one step; he must take another.
Somewhere in the infinity of mirror images was the answer he would need, he or another of his kind.
Ì'll go,' he said simply.
Keilty nodded, rubbed his hand on Charlie's head, and then left. Ten minutes later in Rawingson's quarters, he was writing out a detailed message to Jack Weston, the gist of which was to gather up certain equipment and get over to Patrick Air Force Base as quick as he could.
At the same time, Rawingson was speaking urgently into a phone with a scrambled connection to Washington and Canberra and London.
Only Charlie felt the ship get under way. He lay in his tank, his great eyes unblinking.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The helicopter carrying Jack Weston and the special equipment that Keilty had ordered rendezvoused with the cruiser north of Natuna Island. As the helicopter hovered over the square landing area on the afterdeck and se
ttled down ponderously, the cruiser was already swinging around south in a tight circle that would bring them back to the Riouw Islands in a little over eighteen hours at thirty knots. The wake, Keilty noted, was already churning out swiftly behind them.
Jack jumped from the helicopter, and clutching his hat and ducking low, he scuttled to meet Keilty before the rotors had stopped. He carried a duffel bag in one hand, a heavy suitcase in the other.
Below, in the cruiser's wardroom, Weston sank gratefully into a padded armchair and abandoned himself to the bliss of air conditioning after the over 1000 heat and 95 per cent humidity outside.
`Christ,' he said mildly, thought I was never going to get here.'
'Fast trip?' Keilty inquired innocently.
Weston grunted. 'Fast! They had an F4F at Patrick AFB waiting to take me to Edwards and a RB-76 from there to Hawaii. Mid-air refueling over Guam and a destroyer at Singapore. The destroyer left Singapore like its tail was on fire just a few hours after you. A hundred miles or so southwest of here, they threw me into the helicopter and kicked us off. Twenty-eight hours and I lost track of the time changes.' He slumped wearily, utter dejection written all over his face.
Rawingson and Captain Whittlson came in to join them and shook hands with Weston.
`What's in the duffel bag?' Keilty asked.
'Ha. It's just chock-full of goodies. There's a crate on the helicopter that has your and Charlie's diving gear plus the other stuff you wanted.
`Hey, wait . . Rawingson interrupted, 'yours and whose diving gear?' He looked from one to the other as if unable to decide whether or not his leg was being pulled.
Keilty grinned at Jack. 'Charlie's gear,' he chuckled. Rawingson took out his pipe and stared abstractly into the