One Man's Island

by Thomas J. Wolfenden

  “Did you talk with him?” Tim said, when he came up to her.

  “Yeah, he was really excited. Said he was going to get his boat ready, and sail up to meet me.”

  “Good. You did good, Robyn. Consider yourself absolved,” he said, and hugged her.

  “I’m still really sorry, Daddy.”

  “What’s done is done. The important part is what you just did now. Now all we have to get down there and lure him into our trap. Do you really think he fell for it?”

  “Yeah, Dad, I told him exactly what you told me to tell him. The power on this little radio isn’t like my big one at home, so it will look like to him I’m talking from a lot farther away and think that I’m still in Arizona.”

  “Then that’s all we need. Once we get down there tomorrow, I’ll still have you talk to him, feeding him lines of bullshit until you guys have to take the plane somewhere else.”

  “I still want to kill him. I feel like such an idiot for falling for his shit, Dad.”

  “You just leave that to me. I’ll take care of him, don’t you worry about that,” he said. “Now go see if Taco needs any help out there.”

  That evening, they sat around swapping stories of The Event, and everyone told almost the same story, waking up with terrible sunburn, feeling like they had a hangover, the coppery taste in their mouths, and the extra-bright star in the sky for weeks afterwards. They discussed how they’d all met up with one another, and finally them hearing of the ship, and their ambush, how Williams had taught them all the basics to resist. Some had been in the military, some hadn’t, but all were ready they said, ready and eager. Tim hoped they were.

  The entire group slept in and around the plane that night, and in the morning they all helped load the Hum-Vee into the cargo hold, and shackle it down. Then Jimenez had everyone do a ‘FOD’ walk— Foreign Object Damage— down the runway to pick up everything bigger than a pebble so as not to do any damage to the Hercules when it took off. When everyone was seated in the web seats along each bulkhead, Tim went and shut the cargo ramp while Holly fired up the engines and Jimenez made sure everyone had earplugs.

  Tim went up to the cockpit and strapped himself into the middle seat behind the pilot and copilot’s seats. Robyn was already seated in the copilot’s Holly turned the plane around to face the wind at the end of the runway, and immediately throttled up all four engines and released the brakes. The big plane began its roll, gaining speed, and again, in Tim’s mind, at the last minute, Holly pulled back on the yoke, and the plane leapt into the air at a ridiculous angle, clawing for more altitude.

  When they had reached the proper altitude, Holly programmed the GPS internal navigation with the coordinates of Volivoli and turned on the autopilot. Tim heard the intercom click, and then heard Holly’s voice.

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen! Thank you for flying MacFarland Airlines. We’ll be leveling out at thirty-five thousand feet, and the fasten seatbelt lights have been turned off. The flight crew will be through the cabin shorty to serve light refreshments. Please sit back and enjoy the flight, and we hope you take advantage of the inflight entertainment.”

  “Does this airline have a frequent flyer program?” Tim asked.

  “Aye, but you can only redeem them on the third Wednesday of February, and only if there’s a full moon.”

  “The cheap-assed bastards!”

  “Fly with someone else then!”

  “How long do you figure?” he asked, becoming serious once again.

  “It will take about five hours or so, about the same time from Luke.”

  “I’m going to go back and see how everyone’s doing,” he said, taking off his headphones and unstrapping himself from the seat, leaving Holly and Robyn alone.

  Holly pressed her intercom button. “Robyn, I’ve got to go to the loo. You’ve got the plane!” she said.

  When Holly got up, one foot caught the strap slightly to her flight bag that she’d stashed beside the pilot’s seat. She didn’t notice, but Robyn saw it tip slightly and a few things spilled out. She unstrapped herself, and began picking everything up, stopping when she picked up a narrow white plastic thing. Holding it up, she saw it had a little window in it with a green ‘plus’ sign. She put the bag back and sat down, holding on to the thing she found. Once she had herself strapped back in, she hid it in her lap. She may have been naïve in a lot of ways, but she knew exactly what this was.

  Holly came back after a few minutes and sat back down. “Everything fine with the aircraft?” she asked once she had her headphones back on.

  “Yep, everything’s fine. But I think you dropped this,” Robyn said, handing over what she had found. Holly’s eyes got wide, and she looked at Robyn, who now had a small smile on her face.

  “Does Daddy know?”

  “Oh, Robyn, no, he doesn’t know yet.”

  “When are you going to tell him?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think now is a very good time for it.”

  “No, you’re right there. But he’s got to know at some point.”

  “Aye, but I don’t want him thinking about this now. It’s the last thing he needs on his mind.”

  “Ain’t that the truth? So I’m going to be a big sister?”

  “Yes, you are,” Holly said with a huge grin. “But please, don’t say anything to him. I don’t want him worrying about this right now.”

  “I won’t. It’ll be our secret!” Robyn beamed, thinking how great it would be to actually have a little brother or sister. “Robyn, I’ve been meaning to ask, and it’s a wonder Tim hasn’t thought to ask himself. When you and this Jimmy bloke where chatting, how did the topic of the codes ever come up?”

  Robyn was silent for a minute, and looked out her window. “I’m really not sure. He didn’t come right out and ask. Like Sergeant Williams said, he played me. We were talking one night, and he was going on how his dad was rich and powerful, how he had all this money, and that’s how they were able to sail around the world. I guess it pissed me off, and I just came back with ‘yeah, but my dad is more powerful than that! He’s got this case you see…’ And it just went from there,” she said with a shrug. “Holly, I’m really sorry!”

  “Honey, don’t worry about it. What’s done is done. But let’s keep things to ourselves from now on, like we’re supposed to.”

  “Holly?”

  “Aye, what is it?”

  “I love you.”

  “And I love you too.”

  “Do you love Tim?”

  “Yes, I love Tim too. I haven’t told him that either, but I will soon.”

  They flew on like that silently until soon the GPS beeped, and she checked her instruments. She began her descent, and Tim, feeling the difference, came up to the cockpit.

  “It’s been another great flight, Leftenant. About how long until we get there?”

  “About thirty minutes.”

  Tim strapped himself back into the seat for the last leg of the journey. He noticed Robyn and Holly exchanging glances and giggling, and wondered briefly what that was all about, and then he saw the island from the wide windscreen of the Hercules. A feeling of déjà vu swept over him. A photograph taken from orbit was one thing, to see it for real was another. Here was the island from his dreams, where he was the eagle soaring above, feeling helpless. Holly brought the plane down to a few hundred feet and flew over it several times, never reducing speed, and her banks and turns made some of her passengers sick. Seeing the palm trees fly by the window that fast gave Tim an uneasy feeling, but he knew that Holly could handle the plane. She pulled the plane up and flew out to sea again, and in a wide bank, brought the aircraft in line with the runway, which from his vantage point looked ridiculously tiny. She lowered the flaps and the plane slowed in the air noticeably as it came closer and closer to the tiny airstrip. She had Robyn lower the landing gear, and was satisfied that all the lights were green. It looked like Jimenez’ handiwork was good enough. She brought it down for another smooth
as silk landing, the plane bumping a few times on the rough strip. As soon as all the wheels were down, she reversed the pitch on the props, and a huge billow of white dust engulfed the plane, and they couldn’t see a thing out the windows. The Hercules came to a full stop a few hundred yards later. Using a small wheel in the center of the console, Holly turned the nose wheel and switched the pitch of the props on one side back to their original position, spinning the bird in place one hundred eighty degrees facing back down the runway. She then reversed the pitch on the props again so they were all pulling the aircraft forward, and taxied back down the runway towards the two small concrete buildings and fuel storage tanks.

  Tim let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “Lady, you never cease to amaze me!”

  “Nor you either, Timmy,” she said, with a twinkle in her eyes that made Tim blush. He quickly pulled off his headphones and made his way to the back, where some men were already unshackling the Hum-Vee from the deck. He squeezed by them and opened the loading ramp, which slowly went down on its hydraulic rams. When it was fully down, he stepped off and planted his feet on the old crushed coral runway. He could see places where the old Marston Mat showed through, and was amazed that it was still here after all these years. He made room for the Hum-Vee to drive down the ramp, and as it came to a stop at the bottom, Jerry Williams looked out the passenger window.

  “I’m going to go on a little recon and check out those bunkers. And there was something that looked odd in the photo that I couldn’t make out. I want to check out. I’ll meet you back here in a bit, Sar’ Major.”

  “You do that. I’m going to take a walk over to those concrete huts, and see what I can see.”

  He saw some of the other men wandering down, and said, “You men! If you want, find a nice shady spot and relax for a bit.”

  It was a hot day; it felt like it was over one hundred degrees, and after only a few minutes on the ground, Tim was already sweating. Holly and Robyn were coming down the ramp now, and came over to him.

  “Isn’t it fabulous, Tim?” Holly said. He looked around, and had to agree, it was rather beautiful. It could have been the poster on Paul’s bedroom wall. It had snow white beaches, thousands of coconut palms, and a turquoise lagoon that was breathtaking. Paul would have loved it, he thought with a sad smile.

  “It’s beautiful, Holly,” he said. “Is that where the HQ of a sort was?” he asked, pointing to the huts.

  “Yes, it was where the lieutenant had a small room, and one for the enlisted man. All the radios and things were in the larger one, like an office. In the back was a small galley.”

  “I’m going to take a look-see,” he said, trying to not think about how she knew of the officer’s sleeping arrangements.

  “I’ll go with you,” she said, and then Robyn chimed in that she was going too. They walked over to the big building, about twenty feet by twenty feet. All three walked up to the door, and Tim opened it up. It swung easily on the hinges and a blast of cool air hit him.

  “I guess the air still works,” he said, and walked inside. He flipped a light switch and the fluorescent lights flickered to life. “And the solar power is still up.”

  He walked over to a desk, and in front of a dark computer monitor was a full US Navy dress gray uniform, neatly folded on the desk with the hat placed on top. It looked as if it was placed there that morning. Next to the uniform was a large ledger book and he picked it up. Flipping through the pages, he found scrawled a large manifest of writing. From edge to edge, from top to bottom, each page was crammed with writing. He sat down and started reading. Holly and Robyn disappeared into another room, then came out to go outside, leaving Tim to whatever he was doing. Tim continued reading for some time, intrigued. Then he started to get angry. After about an hour, he put the book down and rubbed his temples.

  “Fuck I need a drink,” he said, aloud to himself. The door opened, and Holly and Robyn returned. Tim stayed seated with his feet up on the desk with a blank look on his face.

  “Well, the solar power is running at a hundred percent, the desalinization plant is working, and there’s food in the stock house,” Holly reported.

  “So when you landed here, this Navy lieutenant, he gave you the story about this being some super-secret stockpile to supply a whole Marine Division? Real Secret Squirrel type shit, huh?”

  “Well, yes… that’s what he told me.”

  “Last I saw Elba…” Tim said.

  “What do you mean, Dad?”

  “Elba was the island that they exiled Napoleon to, Robyn,” Holly said, a worried look crossing her face.

  “And this is your fair lieutenant’s Elba. Seems he and another fuckup seaman were exiled here to keep them from fucking up anymore shit. It’s a weather station. That’s it. If it was a Supply Depot, it’s long gone.”

  “How do you know that?” Holly asked, sitting down in a chair opposite Tim.

  “I know that, because he spelled it out in great detail in this here book,” he said, lifting it up, and letting it fall back down on the desk theatrically. “Oh, and I might add, you certainly left a big impression on him too. He wrote all about that in great detail too.”

  “Tim, I just went by what he told me,” she said, turning red at what he’d just said. Robyn walked up behind Holly and put her hand on her shoulder.

  “And apparently after his enlisted companion died in The Event, he was here alone for several years, slowly going nuts, until about a year ago, when he decided to take a swim and never come back. That’s his uniform there.” He was about to speak again, when Williams came back in with an armload of things.

  “Sar’ Major! You’re not going to believe this one. Ever since I got to Schofield, I heard rumors about places like this all over the Pacific, but I never thought they were true, let alone me finding one,” he said. Tim sat motionless, feet still propped up on the desk, but now one elbow was propped there too, and his hand held the right side of his face. “Look at this!” he said, and began laying things down in front of Tim on the desk. “We only broke into about ten bunkers so far. It was easy, the locks were so rusted, they literally crumbled in our hands. Look at this stuff!”

  Tim started picking through it. “Yep, what I sort of expected after reading a little manifesto,” Tim said, pawing through what Williams had brought. “Sulfa powder, dried up morphine syrettes, KRations.” He picked up a dry-rotted bandolier of .30-06 ammo, and put it down. “I bet nothing is dated any later than say, nineteen forty three or four, right?”

  “That’s about it, Sar’ Major.”

  “Wonderful,” he said, looking right at Holly, who began to tear up, and suddenly got up and ran out of the building, Robyn chasing after her. Tim looked at Williams and sighed, and went on to tell him about the missing lieutenant and the manifesto of self-flagellation the long missing Navy lieutenant had written.

  “Well, how do you feel about eating almost eighty year old KRations, Jerry?”

  “Not too excited about it, Tim, but there’s plenty of fish out there we can catch, so I know we won’t go hungry. But there’s something you’ve got to see.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s better if I show you. Come with me,” he said, and they both went out and got into the Hum-Vee. Jerry drove, Tim got in the passenger side, and they headed off. They drove past the parked Hercules and down the runway to where a small road was barely visible through the underbrush. “Tim, this place is amazing! It’s like we’ve stepped back into time, going through this shit.”

  “I’d heard about places like this too. During the war, factories in the States were cranking out millions of tons of equipment and materiel a day, and when it was over, they had all this shit stacked up everywhere. The places like this, crammed full with the stuff, were forgotten, because it was too expensive to ship back after the war was over. There’s supposed to be hundreds of islands all over the Pacific, just like this.”

  “Look, I can tell you’re pissed at your lady frien
d. Don’t saddle all this shit on her, okay? She didn’t know,” Jerry said.

  “Oh, I’m not pissed at her. I’m just pissed that she let some fuckwit sailor con her out of her flight suit, and into her panties, because he was some Guardian of the Realm with all this Secret Squirrel shit. She’s far too smart to let that happen.”

  “And so is your kid. Smart that is. They both fell for a line of bullshit. It happens to the best of us. I barely remember my twenties, and then one day I woke up at Ft. Benning at thirty wondering what the fuck I was doing married.”

  “I can relate,” Tim said ruefully. “So what’s so hell-fire important that you couldn’t tell me back there?” he asked, as they drove past bunker after bunker, concrete faces aged by water stains and moss, the grass-over dirt long overgrown with palm trees, ferns and weeds.

  “Tim, you’re just going to have to see it to believe it. And it might just help us out. When I was looking at that photograph, I saw the bunkers hidden in the trees, but there was something in the weeds that didn’t look right, and I couldn’t make it out. So I came over here, and almost shit myself.”

  “What was it?” Tim asked, as they passed the last bunker, and stopped almost at the opposite end of the channel, directly across from the concrete huts.

  Jerry got out. “This is what I’m talking about,” he said, pointing to a large growth of palm trees, high weeds and vines. He walked over to what looked like a vine covered wall, took his M4 and poked through the leaves. A definite metallic clink was heard, and he smiled. Tim stepped back and then he saw it. The vine covered turtle-shaped turret of a Sherman Tank.

  “Well I’ll be dipped…” he said slack jawed.

  “I reckon there’s about thirty of them here, along with the same amount of Amtracks over there.”

  “So what are you thinking, Jerry? I mean, surely they won’t run. The engines would need a complete overhaul, and they’re probably seized up sitting here all this time.”

  “No, I figured as much. But the muzzles all have rubber caps on them, as do the exhaust pipes. The things are pretty well sealed up. Inside they’re as new as when they rolled off Cadillac’s assembly line.”