by Philip Wylie
A quick death had been bearable in the faraway past, even hopeful, if dying were part of the assigned risk. The other kind, well, he could face it—this new aspect of death, too; one which came to him because he had survived, lived long afterward, and happily. Now he was like all other men and his will to go on living was like theirs. He smiled—and the pilot, who’d given him some sharp glances, said through the phones harshly, “What’s the joke?”
“Not used to these things. Fun, though.”
“Oh.” A long pause. “Yeah.”
Grove studied the man’s silhouette: dark hair, short, chunky, aloof and very tough-looking. Bob Barker was his ace in the hole—set up by Jerry. And described by Jerry as a quiet type and an expert chopper pilot: owner of three machines and employer of two copilots. Barker’s business was carting tourists about the islands; rich tourists—copter flights are costly. Grove had paid, monthly and through Jerry, a rather extravagant sum to be sure that a pilot and a machine would be ready, day and night, to go to and wait at the rendezvous long since chosen, against a time of need. Jerry had said it was all guaranteed; a ring on the phone and Bob’s reliable services would be “go.”
Up to a point everything had worked. But a man couldn’t think of all possibilities—not Grove, any more, at least. He hadn’t thought, for instance, to get a detailed description of Bob Barker—and the two other pilots hired by See-the-Islands Sky Tours. It had seemed enough that Jerry had arranged the landing place, the chopper and the ready pilot on a standby basis.
Grove pondered and the craft passed the last peaking height, the last deceased volcano. It took the proper heading. “What has the radio got to do with not landing at the Navy field?”
“Get shot,” was the reply, “unless we can identify ourselves, coming in.”
Grove thought that over. The pilot spoke after a time.
“You gotta give me another spot, pal.”
“All right. Whatever is nearest the base. But where I can rent a car.”
“Late, friend. Might have to wait till morning.”
“That’ll be my problem.”
“Check. And over and out, son.”
Now what the hell was wrong with that?
Several things made him uneasy. You could bring in a plane at the base, or a helicopter, with no radio, surely? Nothing secret about the field although what happened in the nearby war games, where subs played tag over a sea range, with hydrophones set out on the bottom, and umpires keeping score—that would be very confidential. But you could land, any cripple could, on the strips. They would keep guns on you till you emerged and identified yourself, perhaps.
But that wasn’t the main element in Grove’s feeling of unease.
“Be an hour,” the pilot said, startling Grove slightly. “Chance for the old shuteye.”
Grove had it, abruptly: not the accent; that didn’t exist; not, anyhow, perceptibly. It was the words, the dated slang. Pal. Friend. Son. No can do. And now, shuteye. Not sack-out, even.
He explored. “Lovely night.”
“Dream-boat.” The pilot gave him a smile. “Up at Kauai, though, nix.”
“You be able to manage?”
“No pianola. But, sure thing.”
“This top speed?”
“I’m flying, bud—can’t chin. It’s cruising speed.”
He didn’t want to talk; but he had already talked enough. Pianola. Bud. Chin.
The man looked older than the impression Jerry had given of Bob Barker and his team. Nothing about his boots, jeans, shirt seemed odd. A chopper isn’t a costume thing, like a commercial passenger plane, Grove told himself. But those idioms had passed from common speech ten-twenty-thirty years ago. They could be regarded as contemporary only by people who’d learned colloquial American long ago—or from a teacher whose English—American, rather—was dated.
Or learned from records; discs, not tapes, he told himself.
Where was the heliport used by the company? Grove knew only that they could and did pick up customers on hotel lawns, on a few suitable roofs, in vacant lots—any open space legal and handy to their clients. The site that they had selected for Grove was a hundred times the necessary size but it was the first spot beyond Sea Life Park distant enough for an end he’d considered as very remote—that of an unexpected escape from hot pursuit. Grove had a thing about exits—the more the readier, and the less conventional the better.
Was it possible that they could have learned of this far-out plan? Not through Jerry; but there were ways—ways that, again, Grove hadn’t contemplated. A tap on Jerry’s home phone might be one; a tail on Jerry might do it—one that led to Bob Barker and to overhearing or worming out this escape hatch. Had they even used this chopper service—and had the real Bob talked idly of his remunerative but unused charter, forgetting the pay included silence? Had a hired pilot talked?
Who could say?
Since the man beside him wasn’t Bob, as Grove now knew—they had learned. And they’d set up their own means of spoiling the method. A man who, doubtless, looked enough like Bob to be mistaken for him in the dark, and was able to fly a chopper, was their very simple program. One who, assuming a watch or another phone tap, would rush to the empty landing place with its long-stalled machinery and wait to clobber the real Bob when he set down and also, probably, got out to wait for his passenger.
Grove laughed at himself without letting it show. The idea of a standby helicopter with a chosen place to meet had seemed, originally, so improbable that he hadn’t even considered it could be discovered. His own phones had not been tapped: that, he had regularly checked out. But there were other phones, other means.
Bungling! Amateurish! Old-aged! Senile! Nitwitted!
Eaper would never have made so many mistakes or left such manifest openings: elephant trails, practically. Grove quit the indulgence of self-condemnation, soon, and considered his situation with intelligence.
He was in a helicopter which he could not fly. The man at the controls was his enemy. No gun or other weapon was in view—which meant nothing. Grove’s suitcase had been tossed in the rear, out of reach, he feared; behind some other bulky object, he remembered.
He let out his seat belt and pretended to doze for ten minutes. He roused and stretched and groped with an arm. The bulky object was a chute pack. Far ahead the low stars couldn’t be seen—clouds. He let an arm drop over the seat back again. The pilot was gazing fixedly ahead. Grove pulled the chute pack over to his side of the craft and examined it with his wandering hand. There was only one—which meant the pilot was not going to find it where he’d put it—that was his first aim. A small gain, Grove felt.
The chopper began to climb.
The island of Kauai lay beneath a greater island of clouds. Dimly and briefly Grove could see lights along the shore but these blanked out as they climbed. Grove was surprised to find the very crises which climb implied had completely erased his frightened interval and its surprise. The old feeling, the good one, that it was still possible to win and to live, had returned. And he was recovering old patterns.
Keeping the corner of his eye on the pilot, feigning a doze, he remembered a rule taught in OSS training: Every tight spot is tight for the other side, too; find out how; find out their aim; find its risk to them. Their aim was obvious: to destroy the one man who could know the location of Neptune before he could inform others, who could not then be reached and removed. Their how was pretty evident, too.
A helicopter hijacking. What was the risk this bogus man ran? A crash? No. Then he had it: one parachute handy and, Grove felt sure, no others—handy, at least. Was he to be thrown out with it—a chute that wouldn’t open? That might be difficult unless he was knocked out first. The pilot would hardly jump and sacrifice the aircraft. Or would he? Not his craft.
So perhaps the chute was for the pilot in an artificial emergency. The idea would be to dump him first and then jump by parachute near a place where his associates would find him—unless they knew Grove
couldn’t fly the thing or unless the false Bob made sure the craft couldn’t be flown, before he bailed out. How would it read?
R. K. Grove had driven to the landing spot and left his (peculiar) station wagon there, conking the pilot and taking off alone (for reasons unguessable). He had crashed in the mountains (sea?)—someplace. What, then, about his house, which would be thoroughly searched, afterward, by the others, before the police heard of the stolen chopper or a dead, unconscious, even a missing Bob: he could be disposed of in the sea near the empty acres. Grove’s house would burn to the ground before they found the shattered copter, Bob, or Bob’s body. Jerry would believe things were going as planned—till much too late.
As he reasoned, the chopper entered the wall of cloud. Would they show on somebody’s radar? Is so, what would be determined? Some fools out in a private helicopter.
They were high in the overcast now—high enough so Grove could tell the difference in his breathing, eight thousand feet at least. What altitude was necessary to clear the mountains? He had studied the maps of the islands carefully and was sure that no Kauai mountain thrust much higher into this fudge than a mile, if that.
Was the added height to insure a total wreck—or a wreck in the jungle where it would not soon be found? The pilot was watching his instruments with great attention now. On Kauai was the rainiest place on earth—seven hundred annual inches and, some years, a thousand.
The helicopter was being buffeted by unpredictable currents. Hard trades hit cliffs below and were deflected upward here. The rotor sliced faster in the ragged upgusts. Grove waited and watched. The pilot squinted at his instruments, leaning forward, his hands showing tension. Grove chanced it, then.
“Just don’t go for the gun,” he said. “Or do you call it ‘gat’?”
The pilot’s head whipped around. Grove had no gun—just something that had pricked him slightly and pulled back; something that had stuck him in the shoulder where he couldn’t see it.
“How’s Solentor these days?”
The plane slid sideways and the pilot had to right it. He lost color.
Grove’s voice was calm, firm. “I need only push this hypo plunger. Cyanide.”
“Bob” looked around with horror.
Grove felt relief that he carefully did not show. He leaned across the man swiftly and found a gun in the far side pocket of his jacket. The pilot had been warned that Grove was tricky. But anybody could see he wasn’t armed. Who’d expect a hypo?
Grove showed it to him; an open safety pin. A little one, at that.
The pilot cursed softly and continuously, but Grove held his gun and snicked off the safety. “That’s the trouble with operators now. Got so many trick gadgets you believe everybody has ’em.”
“Where do you want down?” The voice was shaky, mean, bitter.
“Just keep flying,” was the answer. “At altitude. You think I’m nuts—buddy? I can’t fly this thing. And you know where your people will be, so you could put it right there and I’d never know the difference.”
“So?” Hope and malice in the other’s eyes.
“I’m leaving. And don’t try to stop me.” Grove’s free arm reached back and heaved the packed chute onto his lap. He examined it with care and began to put it on, changing gun hands as he did so, but never shifting his aim. He was aware, suddenly, that the chopper was turning. He muttered, “Hold it! Right here, where you were to jump, eh? Move!”
The chopper planed ahead in the fog. Its red and green lights carved small caves of color in the surrounding whiteness. It flew straight. Kauai was small.
The back pack was set: straps under Grove’s crotch fixed properly, shoulder harness pulled taut. To get his suitcase, he was obliged to half stand. He opened the case with his right hand, withdrew a knife and a coil of nylon rope, cut off a piece, put back the knife and tied the case to the chute—where it wouldn’t bang the chutist. He could not fly choppers but parachutes were very familiar.
“How’d you figure me?”
Trying, Grove smiled again, to stall.
“You figure how I figured. It’ll be a boffo, when you do.” His free hand worked on the door latch. “A real hoot. Good night.”
Grove dove out.
He spun slowly in the thick mist, tossing the gun to one side—no need of it now. His mind called numbers. At ten, he almost pulled the ring and thought better of it. He soon saw, briefly, a big radiance in the murk. Landing lights—or a searchlight, for all he knew. His counting continued. Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty.
His arms and feet had spread in the sky-diver fashion—which was known and practiced long ago, but not, then, as a sport. Acceleration of sixteen feet per second, slowed by the layout. At twenty seconds he yanked the ripcord.
A muffled snap, above. A tremendous yank. Then he hung in the sky, his leather case above his head, banging the shrouds. He untied it and refastened it to the canvas straps which held his body. So thick and so dark you couldn’t see the canopy, just hear.
Then the chopper clattered near and again he saw a balloon of light, high above, circling.
The pilot was hunting and would hunt, all the way down to a level where there were—mountains, Grove hoped.
Twice the light-blob again came in view. Both times, Grove spilled air to hasten his descent, aware that he had no idea of the place he would land. It might be a crag that would break legs, or a cliff that would hit him and let him slide down, chute collapsing, for thousands of feet: wild country and rough, most of Kauai.
He was falling through cotton nothing; and soon, he decided, below the mountaintop level, because the pilot had given up his plan to rip apart the chute with the machine. Grove couldn’t say whether the circling rotor would take that sort of beating.
Suddenly the mist thinned, then dissipated completely. Below was the sea.
He stared, appalled.
14
Trap
He’d hit the water with the force of a foot-first dive from eleven feet, about. It was a chute of a type Grove hadn’t seen, bigger, with gores.
The sea probably meant he was licked.
He looked left and saw only the ocean; right—and he gasped with relief: near mountains, breaking surf. He spilled air to get closer. There was just time to open the case for the knife. He splashed, went under, came up.
He cut the straps and the chute fell away in rippling billows. His case was freed next. It barely floated. But it was watertight: had to be—one never could foresee where it might be exposed to rain, or immersed. He swam the case toward shore, noting that the waves foamed nearer him and that a shimmer beyond had to be beach! Rocks, there, though.
As he moved in, he scanned the area. Not a light. Great, sharp-edged mountains towered into the murk and the beach ahead was enclosed by them.
Where the sea foamed he tried for footing.
Moments later he reached dry, sloping sand.
And he said, aloud, “Wow.”
He opened his case again and took out a waterproof flashlight and the nylon rope—which he hung around his neck. He returned to the sea and swam out, to get the chute; he found it, held up by bellies of air, after a tiring search. He tied his line on it. He was winded when he got it back to land, but glad he was able to haul the chute ashore. Otherwise the wind and tide might have stranded it along the coast and in a place where he could not have recovered it but where it would perhaps serve as a marker. Now he took time to bury the canopy in sand. He thought he understood his location. He sat shivering on his sand pile at last, panting and looking about—and confirmed his belief.
Most of the major islands of Hawaii have coastal roads, owing to the fact that the majority of the population lives fairly near the surrounding sea; much of Hawaii’s interior is mountainous. Molokai lacks such a road system, but Kauai, where he had parachuted, has as good a coast highway as engineering costs permit. However, there is a stretch of about twenty-five miles where no one lives any more, and where road building would be all
but impossible. It is called the Na Pali Coast. The circum-island road turns inland at that point and avoids the impossible margin by many miles.
The reason is evident to any student of a map of Kauai. On the Na Pali Coast, precipitous mountains extend, one after another, into the ocean. They are joined on the land side by almost vertical valleys and their seaward edges drop into the Pacific. This formation is comparable to a row of axheads set together side by side, the blade of each immersed in the ocean and the inland juncture as steep as the angle of adjacent axheads would be. But the mountain “axheads” are thousands of feet high.
The sea in this region is usually rough and treacherous. So it is rarely visited by boat. And the dizzy valley-heads are even less practical means of access: descent requires the skill of an alpinist; and even such climbers hesitate since the near-vertical walls consist of loose rock. The sea-level vales are narrow, slope toward the water and are the product of eons of rockfall from the heights. Each is therefore a slanting isosceles triangle with a beach as its base and a crag heap in its apex.
The Na Pali Coast was, however, settled by Polynesians in ancient times and occupied by them into this century. Their outrigger canoes were fairly well suited to landing—in the rare but occasionally navigable bays. The coast is now called the “Valley of the Lost Tribes” for a strange reason. Scores of years after the Sandwich Islands swarmed with outsiders from America, Europe and the Orient, native Hawaiians lived here in their original manner, undiscovered and unknown to anyone except each other. That fact is evidence of the almost unique inaccessibility of the region.
Today the formidable shore is easily reached by helicopter only; and helicopter flights over Kauai, weather permitting, afford one of the most spectacular and unusual trips in the world. Choppers can land in some of the Na Pali valleys and people fortunate enough to be set down in them find abundant signs of the centuries of occupation by Polynesians. They abandoned their secret habitat, finally, at a time within the memory of living persons who say that life in those clefts was very hard—statements that will be readily understood by those few who have seen their former abode.