by Dean Ing
But Myles had pulled out a length of bamboo with an oily rag spiked on it. "Somebody tried to do something right, to seal the nozzles," he said, shining his light on it, then resuming his scrutiny of the tailpipe. After a few seconds: "Oh, balls. Powder grain' is cracked. No surprise after storage for so long."
Reventlo tried to attain brevity: "Is it more dangerous that way, Victor?"
"Only if you fire it. Anybody got a match? Just kidding," he said to the chorus of heated replies, replacing the cloth wad. "A solid booster propellant needs a certain shape; that's what controls the burning rate.
Cracks can't help but increase the burning surface. Lots of things happen then, usually bad. Blooey," he added simply.
"Well, that's one thing they couldn't keep pickled for fifty years,"
said Lovett.
"Maybe the only thing," Coop replied.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean it's spookier than those goddamn glowing lumps in the jungle, Wade," said the old fellow. "Me and Cris have been checking in the cockpits, and I'll bet that bomber is just like the Tojos. There's a decent workbench at the base of the steps; looks like Philippine mahogany, big vise and all, under an oiled tarp. Big old cracked niirror behind it with a pair of hurricane lamps that, I'll bet you, are still workable. There's even a spare twin-row engine showing through a packing crate against the wall. Cris thinks he knows what kind."
"Think, your backside; I can read the spec plate," Reventlo said. "It's a late model Nakajima, the same article bolted in these Tojos. Put out upwards of two thousand horses, it did. This one, I'll wager, has never been run."
"There y'go," Coop said. "They set this place up so they could make the planes ready to scramble on short notice. Cockpit leather's still-oiled and flexible, rubber's not too bad, even the cowl flaps and stuff are workable. No battery power of course, but there's a. scavenged fuel tank against a wall that smells like there's a gasahol mix in it, and an APU WELL, lemme show you."
As he let himself be led through an obstacle course of closely spaced aircraft, Lovett said he failed to see anything unnatural about it. Shut off from the tropical sun, from salt spray, from virtually all inclement weather, an entombed airplane might survive this way indefinitely. The proof was all around them, he said.
"Yeah, but even mixed with alcohol, would gasoline last this long?" Coop knelt near one limestone wall, and Lovett saw that he was pulling a wooden plug from the fuel tank of a small air-cooled engine. The engine was bolted to what might have been a pump but, when Lovett saw the long coils of cable and the wheeled cart, he knew better. It was an auxiliary power unit, known around the globe to airmen as an APU. With an APU, you could recharge a battery--or get your airplane started without one.
Coop ran two fingers into the tank and pulled them back glistening; held them up for Lovett to sniff. "That may not be avgas, but it's fuel,"
said Coop, tapping a larger tank cannibalized from some ancient wreck.
"Probably gone 'off' long before this," Reventio said. The pilots all knew gasoline tended to fume off its best components in time.
"I know a good way to find out," said Coop, who was now happily fiddling with a rope-coil starter that looked handmade. "One'll get you five this sucker turns over."
It fired on the first pull, ran on the third. Coop shut it down quickly because of its noise, after generating sparks from the cables. "Gents, we've got us a live system," he said as the echoes faded.
"It's fantastic," Reventlo said.
"It's spooky," Coop repeated, rubbing dust from a specification plate on the generator. "Aw well, shit, what did I expect? I can't read this thing."
Reventio hunkered down, took reading glasses from his pocket. "Most of it's a mystery to me," he muttered, "but even in the thirties the Nips used Arabic numbers. It's a twenty-eight-volt system. Too bad it wouldn't serve to start our Letoumeau."
"Who says it wouldn't," Coop scoffed. "This is a higher voltage but it'd run hell out of that starter motor. 'Course you don't wanta keep that up for more'n fifteen seconds at a time. Good idea, Cris. I'll keep it in mind."
Mel Benteen had scarcely said a word the whole time but, as Lovett moved his flash beam past her, he saw that she stood calmly, arms folded, basking in distant memories. "Wouldn't it be something," she said now,
"if we could fly these old beauties out."
Lovett had reconditioned a lot of planes in his time, and knew the odds.
"No. Even if we got one running, it would be insane to take off without a battery in the system. And what am I saying? Starting up an old'apu is one thing, but these," he swept his flashbearn across the cave, "would need hundreds of gallons of fuel assuming they did run."
"Even money on that one," Coop said. "I can't tell you why, and I know it's weird. But I got a feeling about it."
"A good feeling," Myles probed.
"I didn't say that. But a feeling these old buggers would fly, just as they stand."
Climbing down from the belly hatch of the old Betty an hour later, Reventlo viewed this relic with mixed emotions. "I'd forgot how narrow this hatch is," he said, looking back into the bowels of the craft. "The one I ferried in '46 seemed roomier."
"Maybe you weren't so roomy then," Benteen joked, steadying his arm.
"There's that," the Bot conceded. "At least I can still read the controls. This old bird is-well, if I didn't know better, the only proper phrase for it would be well-maintained. Now if only we can get her out of here in the same condition. What does Wade say about that?"
While Reventlo toured the innards of the Betty, Lovett and Myles had checked out that wall of cement that sealed the cave. Benteen and Chip, with Coop Gunther, had begun an inventory of the equipment stacked here and there along the walls. Hearing the question, Lovett made his way back through the obstacle course of wingtips. "I think I found the way Elmo got in. There's a place at ground level that used to be a hole up to about waist high. It's plastered up with Ad mud and rubble and doesn't look like the rest; my guess is, old Ehno filled it in himself Reventlo hmmmed that over. "Perhaps we could begin by opening it up again."
"Yeah, but we don't know it was Elmo's work, and it's at foundation level. The Japanese were great at booby traps. If we dislodge one fragment too many, we could be sorry in a hurry."
"And what does that say about using explosives?"
"Myles doesn't think the wall was intended to be blown down," Lovett confided. "I'm inclined to agree. The American way is to push a button and blast everything halfway to Palau. The Japanese way-beats me," he admitted.
"Nibble it down," said the.)3rit. "For Japanese in those days, hand labor was still cheaper than anything else. Given a hundred soldiers with hammers and chisels, working around the clock-a couple of days at most.
If we had enough sturdy hands or enough time... but perhaps Victor will have a solution."
"Sure he will," said Coop. "And it won't be quiet, and it won't be safe."
"I heard that," said Myles, his flash beam preceding him across the floor. "Coop, don't forget I have as much to gain, or lose, from this as you do. You think I wanta drive a hunk of cement through a rnillion-dollar bird?"
"Lemme put it this way," Coop replied; "there's six of us and six air chines. Whichever one you cover up the worst with rubble, bubba, that one's yours."
"Gentlemen, please," Reventlo said quickly.
"He's on," Myles said. "Like the man said, it may not be quiet, but I'll take that damn wall down like Joshua.' "Blowing your horn all the way,"
Coop grumbled.
"If we're going to stand around snarling at each other, why don't we do it outside, and save our batteries," Benteen said plaintively.
"I can't think why not," Reventio sighed, and led them up those steps long ago chiseled into limestone. Mindful of whoever might be watching them outside, they emerged cautiously and rolled the entrance cover back into place before finding places to lounge above the cement cliff, letting the sea breeze bathe their fac
es.
Chip, leaning out past the natural overhang face downward, seemed in such danger of falling that Lovett warned him back. The youth obeyed, then sat staring toward the distant surf, rubbing his fingers together.
"Why," he asked suddenly, would they have oiled the overhang?"
Myles thought it was to make i, t too slippery for snoopers. Coop suggested it was residue from dumping used engine oil after the cave was sealed. "Nips didn't waste oil, in my youth," Reventlo said. "They'd have filtered old oil and used it for lamps or cooking fires. They never wasted anything' Ever see one of their dumping grounds? There was nothing anyone could possibly use again, ever. At the prison camp they didn't mind if we picked through their dump; even the niice weren't interested."
Chip shrugged. "Maybe, but there it is; just like that layer over all their junk in the cave." And he wiggled his fingers for Lovett's inspection.
Lovett grasped the proffered hand; sniffed and rubbed Chip's fingertips.
"Not much here, but-wait a sec." He tossed a perplexed frown in Coop's direction, then gave a wry grin. "Nah."
"Nah what," said the old fellow. 'Nah, even if they used to run up those engines inside, all that oil-rich exhaust couldn't get through solid cement."
"That's as good a 'nah' as I've heard recently," Coop confirmed.
"Assuming the cement is solid all the way across. Myles: "Why wouldn't it be?"
Chip: "Vents to get rid of exhaust smoke. Isn't that what we're talking about?"
"To vent that damned oil-rich exhaust," Lovett echoed brightening.
"Thank you, Chip. I couldn't get high enough on that cement wall to see, but there might be vents of some kind there.
Should've asked us," Coop put in. "Mel tried to tell me a length of giant bamboo on the floor was a ladder, but damn if I can see how you'd shinny up using those little holes on the pole'wade mightn't," said Reventlo. "But the Nips of my youth could stick a big toe in those holes and nip right up it, so to speak. Anyone care to try?"
Searching glances and negative shrugs said a little about caution and a lot about advancing age, because all eyes eventually fell on Chip. "Oh sure, try it on the dog," he complained. "I'm not keen on doing a face-plant off a bamboo pole in pitch dark, guys. Why not lower me on the outside instead with a rope?"
Reventio's tone was emollient with sweet reason. "Because the rope's in my scooter, and we're up here."
Muttering, Chip disappeared down the trail alone, leaving the others to study the half-mile of jungle that must be cleared before they could tow any aircraft as far as the beach. Myles naturally preferred primacord.
Lovett asked him how recently he had towed a multiton aircraft across three thousand feet of shattered tree trunks. Coop thought the earthmover might help. I Chip puffed back to his elders presently wearing a put-upon expression and, over his shoulder, a hank of the cargo plane's nylon tiedown rope. Myles surprised them all with a surge of expertise, tying several loops of one-foot diameter near one end, testing each loop using his foot as though in a stirrup. Then he did the
'same at the other end. Fifty feet of nylon had quickly become twenty feet of cordage loops. "There," he said, tossing the rig to Chip.
"Footholds and handholds, and loops for us -to belay you with. Grab hold, everybody."
It wasn't quite that easy, but by easing himself feet first backward over the cliff with a death-grip on one loop and his foot thrust into the last one, Chip allowed them to lower him from sight. Lovett was nearest to the edge, but they could'all hear the youth a few feet below them. "Lower. Loooweranother. foot; okay." Bits of vegetation at the verge moved suggestively as he went on: "These little vines kind of hide the underlip but-whoa, shit," he exclaimed softly.
"Chip!" Lovett's imagination treated him to a vision of the youth dropping forty feet.
"It's cool, Pop," floated up to them. "I just tried to move some soft stuff like rope, and my hand went through. Jeez, Louise, that's some breeze," he went on. "There goes some more. It's solid in some places and stuffed with crud in. between. You getting this?"
"Every word," Lovett replied, wishing he could see over the lip.
"The cement's about three inches thick at the top. It's not solid cement, there's little bits of rock and, uh, coral I guess, n, uxed in.
Where I pushed the crud inside, it makes a slot I can't quite get my head into. But the air coming out of there smells like the cave. Ah-Pop?
Can I come up now?"
They hauled away immediately, bringing a familiar grin into view. "That was way cool," Chip grinned, scrambling to his feet. "It's a vent, all right. I bet if you were inside, you could see the slot."
This proved to be the case, when Lovett and Reventlo followed Chip into the cave again. A shaft of light streamed across the cave's sloped ceiling, and at the thickened foundation of the cement wall they found what proved to be a mat of woven fibers Chip had dislodged from the vent.
Reventlo knelt to inspect it; grunted in satisfaction. "Old time Japanese handwork, probably local bark fiber. In Burma we had to make pallets this way. I'd say it's as good a caulk for that vent as you'd need."
Chip, meanwhile, trained his flash beam on the huge barn boo pole they had found earlier. "This is one humongous hunk of grass," he said to no one in particular. "Pop, I think I could make it up this thing if you guys can hold it in place."
"What changed your mind?"
"There's enough fight now; I can make out the holes and get a grip with my fingers. I'm not saying I could stay up there long, but we could give it a try."
Erecting a thirty-foot pole in semidarkness was no simple task, but at its base the bamboo was the diameter of a cantaloupe, and it did not flex as Lovett had feared. He reminded himself that many an Asian skyscraper had been erected with bamboo scaffolds, and with Reventlo, gripped the pole as Chip began his ascent.
The youth started up three times, emitting surfer curses softly, laughing when he failed. On his fourth try, wiping his hands on Reventio's jacket-"Oh, thanks for nothing," the Brit mumbled-he gripped harder with his legs and grunted his way up and up, finally becoming a half-illuminated figure almost at the limestone roof where it met the wall.
Soft fibers began to rain down on Lovett's face, followed by a roll of matting. More light flooded the cave's roof but, as Lovett dodged the mat, he allowed the pole to twist. "Hey, hold it still-Poplookout," Chip cried, as Lovett stood manfully, blinking and half-blinded, hands up to break his grandson's fall.
Reventlo tried to prevent the pole's sidelong fall to no avail, cursing as it clattered down. Then, when Lovett realized that he was not to be hammered senseless by Chip's fall, both men stepped back to survey the tableau above them.
The second vent hole was larger, perhaps five feet wide, and instead of falling back, Chip Mason had managed to thrust head and shoulders through to the outside world. Now he hung there, legs limp, and whatever he was shouting, Lbvett knew it was not a poem of ecstasy.
"Well, this is a proper bag of arseholes," Reventio said, and watched in the half-light as Lovett raced toward the steps. "Where are you bound, Wade?"
"To lower the fucking rope," Lovett panted, already halfway up the incline. "Come on!"
Because the overhang placed the rope beyond Chip's grasp, it became an engineering problem. They tried to solve it this way; with all but-the end loop loosened, they had nearly fifty feet of rope. Lovett thrust a leg through that loop to his crotch and made the others lie with legs braced, then had them lower him to Chip's level, a man's height below.
With Chip's hands to push on his grandfather's knees, Lovett began to swing forward and back until Chip managed to grasp the rope above the loop. The crew above called out profane warnings that, as Chip hauled on the rope, their combined weights were too great to be held by three old farts and a woman. And the drop might not kill Lovett outright, but it would surely ruin his day "Then start lowering me.. Make it slow,"
Lovett called, and told Chip to let the rope pass throug
h his hands as his grandfather, feeling like a toy monkey on a string, slowly moved down the face of the cement wall.
After an endless minute or so, when Lovett was still nearly ten feet from the base, Reventlo called down: "That's the lot, Wade. Getting dicey up here."
"Pull me up, then," Lovett called.
A derisive hoot from Myles: "You a comedian, Lovett?"
He tried frantically to undo the knot at his crotch; no go. Then he began to wriggle until the loop was halfway along his thigh; breathlessly untied his boot one-handed; failed to pull it off.
Both Reventio and Myles were calling for him to hurry now, and Lovett could feel the rope dropping in little jerks from, he decided, big jerks.
A younger man might have pulled up hand-overhand to free his leg, but that was no option for Lovett, who let go with his hands and swung head-downward, trying to urge his leg free. It caught, of course, at his boot, which began to slide off his foot.
"I'm sorry, Pop," was the call from Chip, who could see what was happening and was actually trying to help pull Then the boot slid off and Lovett, by now dangling only six feet above the low vegetation, covered his head with his arms. He hit on his shoulders among shrubbery and rolled heavily' away, gasping for breath. It didn't help when his own boot crowned him a good one.
Chip, still grasping the rope, was mostly supported by the wall, their plight still invisible to the belaying team. The youth called, "Can you haul in a few feet?"
In answer, Reventlo's group was able to recover some rope because Lovett was no longer a pendulum on the end of it. Lovett heard Coop call,
"Whatever you do, do it fast." Feeling older than Elmo Benteen, Lovett staggered to his feet, chest heaving, black spots before his eyes. Then he saw Chip writhing like an eel, hauling furiously on the rope, and gravity helped as the youth half-fell from his perch, still gripping that rope, kicking away from the wall.
After that it was a fast swaying, hand-over-hand descent for Chip who dropped the final ten feet and bounced up again to face Lovett, merriment dancing in his eyes. "You can pull up the rope now," he called.