The Preserve

by Steve Anderson

“No more than a day. They kept us in reserve for a couple days before that. Put us up in some rural inn for the duration, real shithole. But I had a suite. Well, you know me—I went on a bender of that rum they got and that basi wine they got or whatever the local hooch is called.”

  That meant Jock and others were made to wait for his own operation to finish.

  “Who was all there?” Lett said.

  Jock just shook his head.

  “Lansdale there?”

  “Early on he was. Right down to that class ring of his and his irritating, peppy slogans.”

  Lansdale wore a class ring, Lett recalled, a big one. Jock had an eye for things. That meant Lansdale was shuttling between their operations after Reuben.

  Jock added, “I already didn’t like how that Lansdale was showing off to ol’ Dugout Doug back at that special meeting we guarded. But this? This was different. And, there was another one there.”

  “Describe him.”

  Jock described Frankie, the tattoos, the hulk of him. “He looked part Flip maybe, hard to tell.”

  “The one from the Hilo boat?” Lett asked, to confirm. He had to be sure. That meant Frankie was still in country after Reuben. But if Frankie or Lansdale were flying back, they could beat them by days.

  “The very one,” Jock said.

  “I saw him, too. His name is Frankie.”

  Jock didn’t speak a while. Maybe he was waiting for Lett to elaborate. Lett waited it out. They stared out at the shifting, rolling sea.

  “Over the course of that day,” Jock continued, “I heard screams coming from inside that hill, had to be their prisoner, and sounds that might have been electricity, and others like hammering, but tapping-like, what have you . . .”

  “Any engineer types show up, Corps of Engineers, Seabees even?”

  “Nope. Not a one.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Not too far from where Dugout Doug had that special meeting. Still Cagayan Valley.”

  “He ever show up again? The general himself?”

  Jock smiled. “You kidding me now or what?”

  Lett just shrugged.

  “But that Frankie fellow comes strolling out of that hill, big grin, like he just got off a carousel ride. Even patted me on the back. He had that look, Lett. You know the one. The guys on the line who truly don’t give a shit anymores. The ones who enjoy it too much, who you’d call a psychopath killer back home and lock him up, throw away the key to the straightjacket. But this Frankie, see, he had all the keys and they were golden. He certainly enjoyed doing what he did to the boy. Now, if that prisoner was some Jap war criminal, what have you, maybe I could see it on account of all the Japanese did to his country—”

  “He’s Hawaiian,” Lett blurted. He couldn’t help himself. “Hawaiian Filipino. Kanani knows him, from Honolulu. She says to stay clear.”

  “Oh. Our Miss Kanani, from camp? Then you got to warn her Lett, you got to. I know it’s top secret and all, but—”

  “I did.” They hadn’t seen Frankie yet on The Preserve itself, only on other parts of the island. Lett only hoped it stayed that way. “Though, she can sure take care of herself,” he added.

  “True. True. I seen that about her.”

  “So, then, Frankie and company never found what they wanted?” Lett said. “Never got it?”

  “How do you figure?”

  “No trucks came for hauling away items out of that cave?”

  “No. I reckon that poor boy led Frankie on a wild goose chase, meaning that boy never knew, or he never was telling. They got a strong honor system.”

  Jock fell silent. After a while, his head shot up as if Lett just arrived. “Yours was different, though, wasn’t it?” he said.

  “My duty? I’m not supposed to talk about it.”

  “I told you about my shift.”

  Lett held out hands. “There’s nothing to tell. But, okay. There was an interrogation, too. Locals gave us a little trouble but nothing we couldn’t handle. That’s pretty much it.”

  “Well, word is, you did all right.”

  “I just did what I know,” Lett said.

  Jock didn’t push it. He knew the unspoken rule. A grunt only talks if he needs to.

  Lett didn’t tell him that, on his last day in his own remote stretch of steep hills lining the Cagayan Valley, General MacArthur had stridden into the tunnel with Lansdale and staffers and stayed inside there a good hour or more. A meeting inside Lansdale’s tent had lasted another two. After the mighty general sped off, Lett and others were given local rum and San Miguel beers and were told to drink their fill because they were leaving in the morning.

  Jock was glaring at Lett. “I don’t like an interrogation like that, Lett. It’s not right.”

  “I don’t, either.”

  “Don’t tell anyone I told you.”

  “Of course not. Fuck ’em all.”

  Jock grinned, sat up. “I’m sorry I got mad about things.”

  “It’s okay. I’m sorry for my next time. Tell you what, let’s run a tab.”

  They laughed, but not even their smiles lasted long. Jock started tugging at the greasy netting again.

  “I shouldn’t have been talking about that Lansdale,” he said eventually. “Me, I just don’t want to screw up. I have to get myself back in the regular Corps. I’m a lifer Marine, Lett. Got me? Maybe a Gunner, a Mustang even. I’ll do anything to get back in. It’s all I have. Otherwise I’m doomed, see. We’re all doomed.”

  ***

  A week after sailing from the Philippines, Lett was back on the Big Island of the Territory of Hawaii, inside The Preserve. Here he sat again, on the porch of his bungalow. They’d given him a day off. He was nearly halfway through it, the humid afternoon pestering him.

  He broke matters down all over, and it didn’t end up clean like an M1. His assignment might have been top secret, but they weren’t even designated as a unit or even a branch of the military. They might as well have been a mining operation with hired tin badges. Why didn’t they just use local muscle? Why drag them all the way to the Philippines? The reasons sent a shudder through him. No unit designation or official postings or trip papers meant that it could all be disproved. No paper trail. No witnesses.

  There was top secret, and then there was top secret forever.

  Lett got another shudder, left over from being so close to Lansdale for a few days. Lansdale was simply a new incarnation of that same old rear-line player during the war who acted like a daredevil but had the game sewn up so tight he never lost. From his cocky stride to that large class ring he wore, Lansdale reminded Lett of one of those happy-go-lucky college students who belonged to every possible club and one certain revered fraternity, which, Lett suspected, gave the man a secret knowledge about how things worked in the world to benefit only a few. A fortune-favored and in-the-know comer like Lansdale only appeared to care about certain matters that fed his winnings, such as patriotism and the Red Menace and the Good Book, because he knew this was how the deal was sealed. One hell of a sweetheart pact had been struck long ago, by his father’s fathers, a backroom handshake passed down to the inheritors, each heir more fortunate. Sure, someday the mojo would run out. But that only made a possible final inheritor like Lansdale all the more reckless.

  That thought had launched him out of bed and onto the porch. He simply could not sleep, and lying awake had nearly been worse than the assignment. He’d been stuck there reassessing far too much and wishing he knew more. He’d been with The Preserve a few weeks. It was now March. He was getting his cure as promised, and he couldn’t fault Selfer or even Lansdale if it didn’t end up working. But this was also some kind of secret base. It held about fifty personnel at any given time as far as he could tell. Some came and went quick, some looking shakier than others. He thought about those tunnels underneath the complex. He wondered if any personnel were down there now. He even wondered if the camp brought in people—prisoners, let’s call them what they were—who neve
r left the tunnels, never even knew about a camp above them. The tunnels had to be operating, he figured. He had never again seen the men who had guarded him down below, but why should he? They would be needed down there. That troop might have separate quarters somewhere because of their work and could even get in from some entrance outside of camp. Meanwhile, up above, more were being trained for covert operations as far as Lett could tell. He imagined them helping rebels overthrow the new Communist governments cropping up or looming throughout Southeast Asia. Some of these men were housed in another corner of camp and had already received heaps of instruction, training, drilling. Lett still heard their weapons pop sometimes, and he thanked his dose for not letting that get to him. Here on the other side of the tracks were the hard luck jobs, the fatigue cases, the near mental defectives. Each needed their own particular cure. Each got it different. Certain troubles were avoided, certain tendencies cultivated. But they all had their inclinations. And those could be nurtured, like a noxious weed meant to destroy all.

  Like a certain guy who took out a commando and two native scouts with his bare hands.

  That final thought made him bring his dose and his whisky out to the porch, keeping both at the ready next to his Adirondack chair. He couldn’t help thinking Lansdale was singling him out for something. He had proven, inadvertently, mechanically, that he had special skills, and those skills seemed undeniably tied to his cure. Was that all this was, just a way to make him perform the way he had before he started cracking back at the very end of the war? He wasn’t in this for that. No. A robotic killer was never who he wanted to be. He took a deep breath, hoping to catch a scent of those bougainvilleas nearby, got nothing but the dead night air. He sighed, thinking that sometimes it seemed like the dose part of the cure was the only thing keeping him from cracking up altogether and for good.

  Lett shot up right there on the porch. He washed it down with a belt of whisky. He didn’t care who saw.

  Kanani saw. She was standing at a corner of the stairs, eyeing him.

  “Welcome back,” she said.

  “Aloha,” he said.

  “You okay? You don’t look so okay.”

  What was he supposed to tell her? Kanani wasn’t doing much better herself, it seemed. Her shoulders slumped, her dress had a stain on it, and her hair was pinned up sloppily. And her eyes looked puffy.

  He waved her up and reached for the whisky bottle. They shared an awkward hug, Lett patting her on the back like a distant relative. Kanani dropped into the Adirondack chair next to his and sighed. They looked out. His lane of bungalows was quieter than usual this morning.

  “You’re still here,” he said. “How goes the recon? Find out anything new?”

  Kanani shrugged. Smiled. “We’ll see. Getting closer.” She looked away.

  “Tell me,” Lett said.

  “Charlie—Colonel Selfer, he’s looking for new friends, it seems.”

  “So now it’s ‘Charlie’? What sort of looking?”

  “We went on an outing. A picnic.”

  Lett wasn’t surprised. He knew what she was getting into. “Just be careful. He came to me once, too.”

  She stared at him.

  “Oh,” he said. “You went to him. I see.” That stung a little. He drank. He held up the bottle for her, but she waved it away.

  “Still no Miss Mae, I take it?” he said.

  She shook her head.

  “How’s the boogie house?”

  She shook her head again. “Slow going. I’m starting to wonder how I’m supposed to get ahead, if I ever was supposed to. Like I already did what they needed me for, maybe. Those important visitors left the same time as you.”

  “Can you tell me about them?”

  She held up her hands. “One was Japanese, a real thug. Wouldn’t be surprised if he was a war criminal.”

  Lett sat forward. “What did he look like?”

  “Plenty of scars, and hands made for fighting. Dents in his head.”

  Lett lowered deep into his chair, slowly. Kodama, he thought. Lansdale was manipulating even his closest partners in crime.

  She cocked her head so sideways that a flower would’ve fallen from her ear if she’d been wearing one. “Wait, you saw that one, too?”

  Lett didn’t answer.

  “Let me guess—you can’t say any more, yeah?”

  “Yeah. Top secret. Lansdale’s orders.” Lett sighed. “All right, look. His name is Kodama. But that’s all I can tell you.”

  Her face opened up, and her eyes widened. “No, there’s more. I can tell. I can see it on your face.” She shot out of her chair. “You saw Frankie there again?”

  He nodded.

  “Ho, you saw all of them. All but Mae? Auwe. Shit . . .”

  She reached for the whisky. It still had a little left. He twisted off the cap for her. She lowered back with the bottle and muttered something in Pidgin.

  “How did you get back here?” she asked him after a while.

  “On a boat, into Kona this time. A smaller cargo ship. Fast, too.”

  “But you don’t know where that cargo went?”

  “No. They drove us up in that old disguised jalopy of a pickup.”

  “Okay, all right,” she said. “So, we just keep going, right? Me with my cure, and you with yours.”

  “We go for broke,” he said.

  “Go for broke.” She smiled for him. But her eyes were racing, and she produced a Camel for thinking, which she lit with her gold Chinese lighter, and she never did pass back the bottle.

  20.

  Kanani’s head floated and blurred a little from the whisky, but at least it helped her stay calm and think. She had apologized to Wendell for downing the last of his hooch and kissed him on the forehead and promised to bring him back something to eat. First, though, she had ground to cover. She had the afternoon off and a few hours before dark.

  She roamed the camp, down the other lane of bungalows, through other clearings, passing by the mess hall and bar, offices, latrines, storeroom, training grounds, working up a sweat under the high sun. She ducked into the forest for shade and marched as far as she could get on the paths, reaching perimeter fences. She encountered few others the whole way. She didn’t know if the camp being empty was a good or a bad sign for the future, but it helped her stay discreet.

  She had to find a way into those tunnels. She had seen one possibility, just a hatch in a camouflaged outbuilding no bigger than a small shed and locked up tight—that matched what Lett had told her. He must have exited that when he first had his incident. She’d seen other signs, such as concealed housings for ventilation fans and ducts no bigger than chicken coops, and there were hills just up the mountain, but these were outside the perimeter fence, beyond the high forest even. She saw lava-gravel roads leading to them. Lett had mentioned other roads branching off back from Hilo. Maybe the trucks had gone there?

  She took more trails and passed through the corners of camp, the bushes and ferns swelling around her. She reached the edge of the thicker tropical forest. The trails only skirted it. She sized up the wall of foliage just as she had the one behind Miss Mae’s bungalow that let her and Wendell escape from Frankie. She shot through, kept going, twisting and pushing the branches clear, the fronds and gnarly boughs slapping and scratching at her, and eventually the forest loosened up.

  She looked down into a little gully. A narrow road ran down to it, from somewhere outside of camp. A skinny side path was cut out of lava rock. She followed that lower, grasping at rocks and leaves and flowers because her head was floating again from the whisky and humidity. She neared the end of the gully, where she saw a large black hole in the rising rock wall—a lava tube. Ferns grew all around it, wanting to poke their fronds inside, the spiky leaves making the orifice look like a giant green sea anemone about one story high. The road ended there. But there was also that lava tube.

  She heard a clink, a clank.

  She shot over to a bush along the path and squatted behin
d it.

  She peered out, focusing on the lava tube hole. The clink-clank must have been a door; a metal door, a lock.

  She heard footsteps.

  A man emerged from the tunnel. He wore Army coveralls like a mechanic but they were clean as new. A holster and long knife hung off his web belt. His silhouette seemed to grow as he passed her and headed up the road when it should’ve been getting smaller.

  It was no optical illusion. It was Frankie.

  Her skin rippled, cold and hot and then colder.

  21.

  Early the next morning, right before dawn, Lett heard a noise outside. He was already wide-awake, rigid on his bed. He rose mechanically and cracked his door open.

  Selfer stood alone out in the lane, in khaki shorts, his white open-collar shirt unbuttoned, hair slicked back. He might have been a statue. His hands were clasped behind his back. Eventually he moved, something sparkled—he’d drawn a chromium flask from his rear pocket and took a long, slow drink. Lett remembered Selfer had the flask during the war. He once offered Lett a drop, but Lett had refused it. Selfer pocketed the flask and his statue-like stance returned. Maybe he was thinking about that con man father of his he was so fixated on, wondering if he’d finally bested the old man yet, or if he ever truly would. That was one thing they shared—deadbeat fathers. Or maybe he was just thinking about another date with Kanani, prime rib and dessert and . . . Lett imagined Kanani at the Main House, sunning by the pool in one of those scanty new two-piece bathing suits in an aloha print, that flower back in her hair now.

  He pushed the door open, it banged at the wall.

  Selfer swung around. He stepped up onto the porch. “Welcome back,” he chirped. “And good luck! You must have done something right, because you’re getting your next mission.”

  Already? “Assignment,” Lett said. “They called it an assignment before.”

  “Well, Lansdale is calling this one a mission, so that’s what it is,” Selfer muttered, his chirping now stifled. “Look at it this way: You’ll never have to do KP again. That part of your duty is over. Isn’t that just the best? Congratulations.”