Jungle Rules

by Charles W. Henderson

  “We’ll just have to check out tomorrow afternoon, instead of Monday morning,” she sighed, and tears trickled from her eyes. “I hate this war, I hate my job, and I hate having to sneak! Oh, God, September cannot come soon enough. I can quit this Flying Tiger nightmare with the filching hands and smart-ass remarks, from the pilots to the damned ground crew, and go back to my old job at Delta, and you can get out of the damned Marine Corps and be a lawyer in Atlanta, like we planned.”

  She fought back her tears, and lit a fresh cigarette as she snuffed out one.

  “You okay, ma’am?” the scruffy navy chief in Bermuda shorts said, walking to the table with a platter stacked with several big lobsters, and a large bowl filled with boiled jumbo prawns.

  “I think I got a hundred bucks in my wallet, Chief,” O’Connor said, looking at the service trolley loaded with side dishes that a waiter wheeled behind his American boss.

  “Let’s see, with the French wine and the drinks for the guys outside, that comes to eighty-seven dollars and ninety cents, Chief Sparks said, and then winked at Gwen Ebberhardt, who now began to laugh.

  “Here’s five twenties,” O’Connor said, handing the chief the hundred dollars. Then he looked inside his wallet. “Wait a minute, there’s a five and three ones in here, too.”

  “That’s okay, Skipper,” the chief said, and grinned, “I’ll just take what’s left from the hundred for our tips.”

  “I fucking got you back, you smart-ass,” Gwen said, laughing at Terry O’Connor.

  “I concede victory to you, Missus Ebberhardt,” the captain said, and put out his hand for her to shake, which she took and ceremoniously shook.

  Then the redhead reached across the table and snatched the Dixie cup full of supercharged laxative.

  “Wait!” O’Connor said, grabbing her hand.

  “I want it, Captain,” she hissed, and then pulled her hand and the cup away from his grip. “I have a right to get even with him, putting up with all this nonsense of having to avoid his catching me visiting my husband, and now he’s ruined my weekend, too. Besides, I have a foolproof way to pull it off. You two idiots would just get caught Monday, dumping this in his coffee. You think you’re slick, but you’re just an accident waiting to happen. Both of you. Anyway, I’m good at this sort of thing. Subterfuge is my middle name.”

  “Your mother named you subterfuge?” Terry O’Connor said, his eyes sparkling.

  “Yes, she did,” Gwen said, holding her head up, dashing out her cigarette, and lighting a fresh one. Then she looked at her husband and at the captain. “Major Dickinson and Stan the Man take my flight Tuesday morning, right?”

  Both men nodded yes and smiled.

  “What’s the worst that can happen to me if I got caught putting this in his drinks?” she asked and looked at Wayne.

  “I don’t know, get fired I guess,” the lieutenant said.

  “Dicky Doo would sue the airline, too,” O’Connor offered.

  “They deserve it,” Gwen said, and shrugged. “Besides, who said I would get caught? You two, on the other hand, would definitely get nabbed. He’ll figure out his coffee got sabotaged, blame the enlisted guys, who will then put two and two together and let your little secret slip out, if he doesn’t catch you red-handed dumping that shit in the pot in the first place.

  “On the other hand, I can put this on my serving cart, and when I fix his coffee, juice, and whatever else he wants to drink, I can simply spoon it in as I pour. He’s sitting down and can’t see what I’m doing, since I’ll park the cart behind his shoulder when I serve him. It will be perfect.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” O’Connor said, breaking a claw off a lobster and pulling out a hunk of meat. “You know what Dicky Doo looks like?”

  “I’ve seen him a couple of times when I went walking past the law center looking for Wayne. I think I can pick him out of a crowd,” Gwen said, smiling at her husband and taking a boiled prawn from the bowl and dipping it in cocktail sauce. “Besides, I can look on the passenger manifest and locate him by his seat assignment.”

  “Just look for the potbellied major with three chins and a black and white flattop haircut,” Wayne Ebberhardt said and laughed.

  “Yeah, Gwen,” O’Connor chuckled, pulling lobster meat from the claw, “he’ll be with this sawed-off captain walking with his arms out like a seagull on a hot day.”

  “How could I miss them then?” Gwen said, and laughed with the two Marines as they ate.

  “Hey, Sparky,” Wayne Ebberhardt called to the chief, “why don’t you tell those guys out there sucking on their beer bottles to come inside and enjoy the air conditioning and help us with all this food.”

  YAMAGUCHI AND HIS Five-Star Country All-Stars mimicked George Jones while four nearly naked girls go-go danced on round pedestals at each end of the stage. Terry O’Connor and Jon Kirkwood had finished their dinner late, and now drank beer at the Da Nang Air Base Officers’ Club bar.

  “Where’s Stanley?” O’Connor said to his partner. “I’ve got a little plan up my sleeve that fell in my lap by accident while reading Time magazine on the shuttle this afternoon. It’s perfect.”

  “Hey, don’t fuck things up, Terry,” Kirkwood warned. “You start saying shit to Stanley and he’ll figure out you’re tied into this prank and tip the whole thing off.”

  “No, no, no,” O’Connor said, shaking his head as he spoke. “I’ll be cool with it. Very subtle.”

  “Like a grenade down the shitter,” Kirkwood followed. “Okay, there he is, sitting with his brother and no less than Charlie Heyster.”

  “That makes it even better,” O’Connor said, grabbing his beer from the bar. “Come on, you can help.”

  “I don’t know about this,” Kirkwood said, picking up his bottle of Olympia and following his buddy to the table where the three prosecutors sat.

  “Congratulations, Charlie,” O’Connor said, putting out his hand for the new major-select.

  “Thanks, Captain O’Connor,” Heyster said, feeling the power of his newly realized, soon-to-be field-grade status, and already separating himself socially from the company-grade scum.

  “Oh, you’re quite welcome, Major-Select Heyster, sir,” O’Connor said, and pulled out a chair and sat with the trio while Jon Kirkwood remained standing and silent.

  “Say, Stanley, I hear you’re flying to Okinawa on Tuesday with the mojo,” O’Connor said, taking a pull off his mug of beer.

  “Yeah, and what’s it to you, wiseguy?” Tufts snorted, sipping from the top of a glass of ice, scotch, and water.

  “Hey, nothing I guess,” O’Connor said, shrugging. “I just wanted to pass on a little good scoop to you, that’s all. If you don’t care to hear it, I’ll go back to the bar.”

  “That’s okay. What scoop?” Stanley Tufts said, his curiosity always at a peak when teased with the right question.

  “I had to chop over to Marble Mountain today, to take back those rifles that Jon and I ended up with when we got stuck out at Fire Base Ross last November,” O’Connor began, and leaned back in his chair, sipping his beer. “Once I got done, I had to take the shuttle back to base, so I had some time to kill. Anyway, I picked up a copy of Time magazine that somebody had left over at the chopper ready room, and took it with me to read. You know, the long ride and all. So I open up the magazine and low and behold they’ve got this article on flight fatigue and how to beat it. I thought of you, since you and the mojo are flying out on Tuesday. I got the magazine in the hooch, if you want to read it.”

  “No, I don’t have time, but thanks,” Stanley said, and sipped his scotch. “Anything good that I could use?”

  “Oh, sure, lots of tips,” O’Connor said, and then looked at Kirkwood and smiled. “Best thing you and the major can do before you fly Tuesday morning is to drink lots and lots of water Monday night. You know, at high altitude there is no moisture in the air. You dry out really bad on a plane, so lots of water in your system before you fly keeps you fresh. Like a rose
. Take it out of the water, it wilts. People work the same way.”

  “Sure, that makes sense,” Stanley said, looking seriously at O’Connor. “How much water should I drink, did it say?”

  “Yeah,” O’Connor said, and shrugged. “They gave it in liters. Two liters the night before, and a couple more liters an hour or so before the flight, if you can handle that much water. Sounds like a lot to me.”

  “Two liters?” Stanley said and wrinkled his brow. “That’s like half a gallon or so, right?”

  “Yeah, about that,” Charlie Heyster said, taking out a briar pipe and lighting it.

  Jon Kirkwood motioned with his head and eyebrows at Terry O’Connor to look at the pretentious man assuming the mantle of a field-grade Marine. Both defense lawyers smiled.

  “So I drink half a gallon of water the night before I fly, and then another half a gallon that morning, too?” Stanley said, shaking his head. “Sounds like a hell of a lot of water.”

  “Ah, you know these magazines,” O’Connor said, shrugging and drinking his beer. “I bet if you just drank all you could hold, that would be plenty. Hell, any is better than nothing, you know.”

  “I could make sure that the major and I drink plenty on the plane, too,” Stanley said, smiling.

  “You sure could, Stanley. You sure could,” O’Connor said, and grinned at Kirkwood, who rolled his eyes and walked away from the table.

  Chapter 11

  TROLLS’ REVENGE

  “THAT’S US, STANLEY, scoop it up and let’s go,” Major Dudley L. Dickinson said to Captain Stanley Tufts, pushing his chair away from the café table in the passenger terminal snack bar at Da Nang Air Base. A voice over the public address system had just echoed through the waiting area the first call for boarding the Tuesday morning Flying Tigers freedom bird flight to Okinawa and then to Norton Air Force Base at San Bernardino, California.

  The five-foot, eight-inch-tall captain took his fork and raked the last of his scrambled eggs onto a triangle of buttered toast, and shoved it in his mouth. Then he finished his fourth twelve-ounce tumbler of water that morning, and took a last gulp of coffee before getting out of his seat.

  “Sir, I think if you’d drank just one more glassful of water,” Tufts said, hurrying behind the major before Dicky Doo cut him off.

  “Stanley, if I finished one more glass of water, I would have it leaking out my ears,” Dickinson snarled back, shoving his way past a jam of enlisted Marines and soldiers waiting their turns to board the aircraft. “I drank two canteens full of water last night, and then a big glass of water when I got out of the rack this morning, and two more with breakfast.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to hit the head first, sir?” Tufts said, scrambling

  behind the major, pushing to the front of a line of junior officers who scowled at the captain for breaking through their ranks.

  “They have a head on the plane,” Dickinson said, barging his way to the aircraft.

  “Fucking field-grade and his asshole cleaner,” a voice grumbled from behind the pair of lawyers, stopping Dickinson in his tracks.

  “Who said that!” Dicky Doo hissed, spinning on his toes and eyeing a line of a dozen or more lieutenants and captains with a few collegially minded majors and a lieutenant colonel mixed with them, choosing to board the plane with the crowd rather than using their ranks to jump ahead in the line. Behind the officers, staff noncommissioned officers waited, then mostly sergeants and corporals, and at the tail end of the queue, the majority of passengers for the flight, the nonrated enlisted soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines. Scattered among these lowest-ranking servicemen, a sprinkling of field- and company-grade officers waited with them, holding out to board last, a subtle show of respect for the lower ranks. Hustling tight on Dickinson’s heels, his arms held out slightly from his body, keeping the inside creases of his khaki shirt wrinkle-free, Stanley Tufts dutifully emulated the major by also turning back and glaring at the congregation of pissed-off servicemen behind them.

  “Come, Stanley,” the major snapped, wheeling on his toes and stepping onto the silvery stairway parked against the front passenger portal of the Boeing 707 jetliner.

  “Yeah, come, Stanley, kiss my ass,” the voice called again. “Major Lard-Bottom and his boy.”

  Dicky Doo grabbed the rail of the stairway and whipped his head around, trying to see who said the blatantly disrespectful remark. Stanley Tufts, trying to stay close, slammed against the major’s backside and caused both men to stumble. The Laurel and Hardy wreck sent a shock of laughter rippling through the approximately two hundred servicemen who watched the clumsy duo fumbling at the foot of the gangway.

  Noticing the increasing gap in the line of officers boarding the aircraft, Gwen Ebberhardt stepped out of the doorway and looked down the stairs, where she saw Dicky Doo glaring up at her, his teeth clenched and his face boiling, as he trundled up the steps. Stanley Tufts hurried behind the mojo with his nose nearly touching Dickinson’s back pockets.

  The shapely, six-foot-tall, red-haired flight attendant smiled and waved at the sea of mostly homebound men from her perch at the stairway’s top deck, and then took Major Dickinson by the arm and led him inside the plane, with the captain hot on his heels. Seeing the eye-fetching woman, the laughter immediately changed to a chorus of cheers and wolf-calling whistles, mostly from the lower ranks of veterans who had survived their thirteen-months-long tours of combat duty and now headed Stateside to their waiting families.

  “Major Dickinson and Captain Tufts here, shouldn’t we be up front someplace?” the mojo told Gwen Ebberhardt.

  “What does that card with your seat assignment say, sir?” she asked Dicky Doo, pointing to the tickets he held clutched in his fist, issued to the two men when they checked in for the flight that morning.

  “They put us back there on row nineteen,” Dickinson spoke in a quick and angry tone. “I think that’s where the enlisted men sit. Field-grade and their companion officers should sit at the front accordingly.”

  “That’s not how we do it on this flight, sir,” Gwen said, still smiling, and then taking the two boarding passes that the senior lawyer held and reading the information printed on them. “You have assignments on an exit row, just above the forward edge of the wing. Those are excellent seats, sir; extra legroom.”

  “Okay then,” Dickinson grumbled, snatched the two tickets from her hand, and rumbled down the aisle, with Stanley Tufts glued to his back. Gwen Ebberhardt shrugged and walked toward the aircraft entrance where other servicemen now hurried aboard.

  “I think First Lieutenant Ebberhardt’s wife is named Gwen,” Stanley Tufts said, following Dicky Doo to the aisle and middle seats on row nineteen, where a captain by the window sat with his eyes closed and his head resting against the bulkhead.

  “Woman like her wouldn’t marry some lowlife Marine,” Dickinson told Tufts as he settled onto his chair, letting out a condescending chuckle as he spoke. “A guy’s got to have a pretty big stack of cash in the bank to get inside that babe’s bloomers, I’ll bet you. Besides, that broad’s got higher sights than to settle on some lowlife troll like Wayne The-Hick-from-North-Carolina Ebberhardt.”

  Both Marines laughed at the major’s degrading comment, and as Gwen Ebberhardt walked past the two lawyers, Stanley Tufts waved to her.

  “Yes, sir, may I help you?” she asked, leaning over Dickinson to talk to Tufts, the fragrance of her Chanel Number Five filling their nostrils. Both men’s eyes focused inside the open top of her white blouse, catching a glimpse of the bulging porcelain flesh of the upper area of her generous breasts peeking from beneath.

  “I see that your name tag says Gwen,” Stanley Tufts said and then blushed. “Is that Ebberhardt?”

  Gwen blinked but kept smiling, and never let any shock of the question show on her face, even though inside herself she felt panic wanting to leap out.

  “Oh, no,” she shrugged, closing her open neckline with her right hand, “Crookshank. Gwendolyn Crookshan
k. I know who you’re talking about, though, but she’s on another crew. Her husband’s a lawyer in Da Nang, I hear.”

  “Yeah, he’s a buddy of ours,” Tufts said, smiling.

  “That’s nice. Gentlemen, I need to get back to my chores,” Gwen said, standing straight and then heading toward the front of the plane.

  “See, what did I tell you?” Dicky Doo said, watching the stewardess walk away, enjoying the sight of her legs and derriere moving beneath her short, tight-fitting blue skirt. “That’s some high-priced snatch, my friend, way outside that troll Ebberhardt’s league.”

  In ten minutes, the last passengers to embark the aircraft buckled themselves in their seats while the ground crew continued loading the baggage. While airmen outside hurried to get the plane launched, and Gwen and three other stewardesses latched doors, closed overhead bins, and made sure that they had everything inside secured for taxi and takeoff, the pilot began firing engines and turned up the air conditioning.

  “Damn you, Stanley, and your goofy water project, now I’ve got to take a leak,” Dickinson said, unlatching his lap belt and stepping away from his seat.

  The Marine captain by the window looked at Tufts, crowded in the middle, fidgeting with his safety belt, and at the major, now stomping down the aisle toward the lavatory by the plane’s front door.

  “Hey, sport,” the captain by the window growled at the junior partner of the law firm seated by him on row nineteen, “we can’t taxi if you’re out of your seat. If you go take a piss, too, we’ll sit here all fucking day.”

  Stanley Tufts smirked and started to say something cutting to the rude officer, but then he saw the gold jump wings and silver Scuba head badges pinned above his uniform’s left breast pocket.

  “Yeah, you’re right, Skipper,” Tufts gulped, and smiled with a meek shrug at the recon Marine. Then he retightened his seat belt, and concentrated on holding his bladder.