by Philip Wylie
Grove, meanwhile, had crawled toward the place where he was sure the main operation would be based. A double track led into the casuarina woods from the Kalan. It wound between trees until it reached an opening where a car could turn around. Grove had made a careful study of his environs and found this road and turnabout long ago. He had smiled at the discovery; for the car-wide, double track led nowhere beyond. Yet it was plainly used a good deal. It came from the highway and where it ended a car could not only be turned around but would be hidden from the Kalan. It was, then, a teenagers’ refuge for petting. It would never be used in daylight. Any would-be user in dark hours could find it pre-empted; an earlier vehicle would be spotted after the second turn from the highway. The intending driver would then back out and find a different spot.
There was a place on the shore in the opposite direction from his house equally ideal: an abandoned, decaying cottage surrounded by coconut palms up which and around which once-ornamental vines and shrubs grew rankly. Grove had bought the house next door to his own because it furnished a far better means of getting into the water, at night, than his first abode.
Nobody could keep watch of the ocean beyond it, effectively, in the dark. But the three sites Grove discovered, of which two were now known to be in use and the third surely was, had shown him that a constant and lasting surveillance of the nearby land area and of the only road exit from his first property was possible. To get clear, unnoticed, under those conditions then became a problem he went to work on. One solution was the station wagon. The other, a tunnel to the next-door house, certain rearrangements of its interior and some additions to its landscaping.
He had delayed that work until he began to feel he might need means for departure from his home of a suitable nature, always granting there was observation and that it would be by professionals, who would want their presence to remain unknown to the public. And, of course, to Grove, hopefully.
His crawl through the woods took time. Twice he saw the evidence of posted men—but he merely evaded those locations. Australian pines are not, actually, conifers. They are more closely related to oaks. However, their leaves are like needles, they are thickly branched, grow densely and quickly, and they shed a carpet that is like that of a pine forest. The land they covered here was unimproved, which meant that the boulders and lesser rocks that had rolled from the talus over the place long before the Kalan had been constructed were still in their original stopping places.
Better cover would be hard to find. Grove slid through the gloomy trees till he came up behind a rock where he could look into the opening at the end of the auto track. He smiled, unconsciously, when he did so. Solentor had excellent ideas for concealment and for maneuver, too. Excellent.
It did not surprise Grove to see the ambulance. A man lounged on each side of the white fenders—an armed man. In the front seat were two others. Grove saw one was a hunchback and knew his identity, instantly. He was a little older than Grove. He occupied the driver’s seat in fact and metaphorically. The very tall man beside Rauchamb was a Chinese and that did not seem surprising. Grove had never seen the hunchback, Georges Rauchamb, but that Nazi collaborator had infiltrated the command of the Provençal Resistance to the terrible cost of certain of Grove’s friends.
As he crept closer Grove realized their humdrum talk had become different and staccato. He began to gather its purport even before he reached a better hiding place. The ambulance also served as a communications center! One with a wave length or some other system that would not be detected.
The hunchback’s speech was hoarse and had a frightening quality. The fake or modified ambulance looked normal—on one of its two stretchers lay a motionless figure, a dummy, Grove was sure. No evidence of the electronic gear showed.
What Grove heard was spoken in bad Russian and he had come in on its beginning.
“Nothing so far,” the muted loudspeaker had said. “Not a sign of movement inside. No light flashes. Zero.”
Solentor cut in, then, apparently speaking from a distance, as the volume was fainter. He sounded unsure, for him. “How many men are within rushing distance?”
“Rush that house?” There was shock in the response; Grove’s expression was fascinated.
“May come to that. The area check is all negative?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Both sides of the properties? No move in the bay?”
“Nothing, nothing at all, General.”
“Good. You will stand by.” A pause. “Station check,” came the command.
The check astonished Grove. Seventeen posts reported in alpha-beta succession; their positions were not stated.
When that rapid, many-voiced string of negatives ended, Solentor said, “We’ve lost touch. They may be out and running.” A pause. “Georges?”
“Sir?”
“Your present disposition?”
“Vehicle C at assigned post. Men on both outer corners of area. Two on seaward watch. If target appears we are ready to destroy. If other movement occurs, will pursue and strike. Any order change?”
“None.”
Solentor went off the air. The dwarf descended, speaking English to the men leaning on the fenders. “Send Overti and Han on a sweep of these damned trees. Tell them to look for signs of recent disturbance. They hardly could be here, but we won’t take chances.”
The men pushed into the thick foliage and separated. They soon came back accompanied by two mixed breed thugs, square, rudely made men who looked silly in aloha shirts—but weren’t silly, in fact. The hunchback cocked himself to protest. The corner guards hadn’t gone straight into the woods. But he realized why they had come back: to pick up binoculars Rauchamb hadn’t thought to send his shore guards.
Grove was near enough to see the hunchback’s pique at his oversight, and his near failure to bawl out men for his lapse. He had to vent his temper on others. “Han,” he said to the oriental who’d been loafing, “go with them.”
Three men were thus ordered into the pines. A sharp snapping sound made them stop. The hunchback smiled with hate. Then, meaning to exhort greater caution but actually instilling fear, he said, “Remember, dolls, if it is Grove, he is cunning: I know of him. His companion, the park policeman, is not a simpleton either. If they are in the wood, you will need maybe more brains than you have. But I, for my own reasons, and the director also, would appreciate a gift of Grove’s body.”
He made that speech, Grove thought, for another end, too. It would give anyone who’d perhaps broken that branch, time to get windy or become confused, to hurry, as the crack would expectably result in a rush. Very smart.
Grove knew Jerry had been coming to see why he was late for the rendezvous. Now the bad luck of a branch-crack had set three men out for Grove’s friend. Two remained. Rauchamb clambered back laboriously to the front seat. The other man was looking up to see if the hunchback would let him enjoy that comfort.
Grove took out of his case a smooth, silver-bright, steel ball bearing, two inches in diameter, heavy, and something that required practice to throw well. Grove had been practicing for a lifetime on throwing this along with many other, mostly ordinary things. He hit the guard in the temple and dropped him instantly.
The hunchback caught a peripheral impression. He slid out of the seat to the other side of the vehicle and down like a broken snake. He knew the guard had fallen but not why. Georges Rauchamb acted on the one fact for a single goal: saving himself. He had no accurate idea of the nature or the direction of the attack, if it was that. And Grove, already rolling under the ambulance, watched legs turn this way and that as Georges tried to find a target for the gun he certainly had drawn.
From the woods came the quick and double booms of a .45. That galvanized the hunchback. Grove was out and behind him while his legs stood tense. Grove had grabbed the man before he was aware of any presence near his vehicle. The gun was twisted out of the hunchback’s hand. Georges was powerful and skilled but his warped back was a handicap
and in any event Grove wanted no fight. A karate chop left one of his arms hanging limp and when he whipped the frog-shaped man around Grove saw the eyes identify his attacker even as he composed the blow to the jaw that dropped the man.
Grove looked about and found a stone the size of a basketball. He returned to the hunchback. He had not killed a man in a long while, but he raised the rock to destroy this deadly, hated traitor. He felt a moment of something like shame though the execution was due a thousand times over. To leave Rauchamb alive was a sin. Yet could he be inactivated and perhaps would then, someday, face justice less summary? The rock slammed down.
Grove was going into the woods when he heard a chuckle. It came from Jerry, who had watched Grove’s last act of discarding a rock. Covered with dirt and pine needles from rolling on the ground, bloodied, bruised, Jerry still laughed. “I got all those three. Shot two. The third kind of dropped from a tree. A surprise. He died, after a scuffle.” He was still panting and trying to conceal that. He watched Grove retrieve his ball bearing and he studied the hunchback. “There are people who wouldn’t believe it of you, Ring!”
Grove shrugged and jerked his head at the ambulance, taking the passenger’s seat, after Jerry said sure, he could drive it. He slipped behind the wheel. “Where to? Phone?”
The ambulance bumped toward the Kalan. “No. Airport.”
“Airport, for God’s sake?”
“Yeah. Full speed. You know how to switch on the siren?”
Jerry knew. They gathered speed as cars jumped onto shoulders to evade their careening approach. To zigzag wildly past the golf course and on to Pali Drive took minutes but involved twice as many near misses of other cars as those minutes. Grove wondered, evanescently, if he’d been wise to let Jerry drive and he saw a red light at the Pali intersection. Jerry jumped it, then, drifted the turn.
Grove hadn’t known you could drift an ambulance; maybe Jerry hadn’t, either, and was merely finding out.
“Why can’t we make your damn phone call?” Jerry asked. Then he answered himself. “Never mind. I know.”
Grove nodded. “Seventeen parties have been posted by Solentor, at what points he didn’t broadcast.” Grove was watching traffic plowed open by Jerry as they roared up the mountain thruway. They might have a tail, soon; as soon as the post they’d put out of action failed to answer there would be a general alarm.
That happened as the ambulance lunged to the tunnels. A crackling voice called, “Station Gamma—do you receive me?”
Grove considered faking. He couldn’t talk like Georges. He didn’t know the passwords. They’d catch on in a few exchanges. Instead of stalling, he turned to the black boxes on the floor in the rear and began to throw switches. He got one that stopped the noise. As it ceased, the ambulance shot out the second tunnel, siren at full banshee, accelerator floored. And Jerry pointed.
Grove saw what Jerry meant. Along the shoulder of the road dust and gravel bursts rose as if magically. Machine gun bullets were making the neatly spaced puffs, fired from above the tunnel mouth, but not accurately. In seconds they were out of range of that group.
Grove apologized. “If I weren’t an old-timer—and a lazy dope—I’d maybe know how to use this equipment. Get somebody to alert my guy—say. But what I know about electronic gear you could stuff in a pool ball.”
Jerry missed a Buick, an ancient Rambler, and a cement truck before he could even shake his head. “Better as is. What if the cops chase us?” He sounded eager. They were going down the mountain at just above a hundred; Honolulu would soon come briefly into view.
Grove climbed into the rear of the ambulance and found what he thought he might: two white outfits—trousers and blouses. As Jerry drove, Grove was knocked about, but he put a pair of white trousers over his slacks. Then he climbed back and helped Jerry into a coat when the lunging scene allowed it.
They picked up a possible tail on the last mile of the International Airport freeway. They were sure when guns flashed from men in the tan Continental. So they skipped the red light at the airport turn; the others tried to, but traffic that let the ambulance roar through closed against the mere Continental.
“There will be a next party at the airport,” Grove said. “But maybe not at the charter plane end.”
“Got the money?”
“Sure.” Grove reached for his case again.
Jerry then executed a complex and illegal run through the mazes of the parking area and pulled up at the far end of the roofed walks and the building behind them. Before they leaped out, they donned white caps. Grove grabbed his case and they raced into the building with a furled stretcher. Jerry went to the counter of the Royal Hawaiian Air Line. A girl at the counter had seen them coming. “Is somebody ill?”
Jerry said, “Where’s Mac?”
The girl, Japanese, turned toward an office. She called, “Mac.” A Texas-tan, cowhand-gaunt man appeared. Jerry took the roll of bills from Grove and was startled to see that the top ones were hundreds. “Got a plane out there ready to go?”
Mac was puzzled and in no haste. “Hi, Jerry. What’s this? Hallowe’en?”
“We want out—and up—and to the Big Island, Mac, before people come in here and start machine-gunning the place. Name your price. But let’s go. Sheila can hold down the shop. We’re just in a kind of panic. Legit but not to talk about. My friend will square the whole bit—”
The man named Mac took about five seconds to decide. Having done so, he said nothing. Instead, he ran for the swing doors that opened on the gates and then led through the gates to a standing Beechcraft. Jerry and Grove leaped aboard. The two props began turning before Jerry got the steps up and the door fast. Mac was talking to the control tower about an emergency—ambulance case—and his need to be cleared.
The flight took nearly two hours, owing to weather and stacking. But it was an uneventful trip and Mac had radioed for a car. Jerry and Grove started for the Volcanos National Park at the best speed of the rented sedan. Mac was arranging the paperwork to let them leave Hilo at once, if required.
When the local traffic thinned and the road was straight on its steady rise, they took stock. “Nobody got in the air to chase us,” Jerry said pensively, “but we ought to take a peek now and then to be sure they haven’t sent out a Hilo posse. Nothing in the mirrors. What about the wild blue and so on?”
Grove leaned out and gazed up. “No bogies. No friendly craft either. Blue yonder is all.” He looked closely at Jerry, who had taken the wheel again. “You got a big swelling on your cheek and it’ll be a gaudy purple pretty soon. And then there seem to be a few cuts here and there. Blood ran out and congealed. Were you in some sort of accident?”
“Nearly,” Jerry replied, deadpan. “Man fell on me from a tree—big as I am. He acted peeved about it—tried to kill me, in fact. Foolish.” Jerry allowed time to pass. “He was the one that got killed.”
They slowed slightly to a show of respect for the speed limits of Kurtistown.
Grove then resumed the game. He didn’t have to wonder why it was played. Other times and under other stresses—though never with such a magnitude of responsibility—he had played the game, waiting to get a signal that would send him and his companions on errands sure to involve assorted risks or waiting holed up under shelling: lots of times, lots of places.
“You ever drive an ambulance before?”
“Not exactly,” Jerry grinned, his eyes fixed ahead; the car was doing almost ninety.
“That’s a comfort! I doubt if you’d ever have gotten a case to a hospital alive.”
“Another kid and I once borrowed a hearse. Never forget it! In California—where we knew a stretch that runs straight for maybe twelve miles.”
“The other kid survive too?”
“Yeah. Well, that hearse had more speed then a gun-shy goose. Turned out later it was also used as an ambulance. We tried out various other things too. We finally got stuck and we had a long wait for a hitchhike home. Nobody was glad to see us ei
ther. But I still remember the general capabilities of that wagon! What hospital’s ambulance was it, incidentally?”
Grove looked at the road. It poured at them like a jet-powered, endless javelin. “The lettering on it referred to some St. Mark’s-or St. Luke’s-Clinic.”
“No such thing.”
“Naturally. But what cop would realize that, for sure, in time to catch it?”
“No cop.”
“Anyhow,” Grove said after a further pause, “I don’t ever need to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. I know how it feels.”
Jerry chortled.
It grew cooler though the day was bright and the hour midmorning. Eucalyptus trees thinned; tree ferns replaced them and reminded Grove of the Thurston Lava Tube, which he had twice visited by a meandering steep path through a forest of such ferns.
They swept up the slope of the volcanic shield. Ohia trees appeared, their scarlet shaving-brush blossoms showing here and there. Grove began to contemplate the meeting with Jake Palmer. Unless Palmer was also away. He could think about that if it happened.
It would be Dr. Palmer—and the President hadn’t said what Jake stood for. Jason, perhaps? Or would it be for “Everything’s Jake”—a nickname earned by a habitual expression? No matter, Grove thought. Would he live in the Observatory itself or have a house nearby? Grove didn’t know and had not had a chance to ascertain since he’d been given the name.
One thing was sure, Dr. Palmer would, recently, have had a phone installed, a second phone surely. A phone put in a bedroom, or some other place where it could be used and the user would not be overheard. The installation would probably be known to his colleagues. And his refusal to explain it would lead to ribbing, no doubt. But the fact that it was connected to a special instrument in the White House would not be imagined.
Palmer might use it for trumped-up personal calls—to nameless pals, or perhaps he and his old friend Steve chatted, now and then.