Flight of the Intruder jg-1

by Stephen Coonts

  “Why don’t we take a walk this afternoon, maybe see some sights?”

  “It doesn’t look like a good day for it.” She sighed.

  “Tell you what. I could meet you for tea.”

  “For tea?”

  “Haven’t you ever met anyone for tea before?”

  “Nope, but I’m game. Where do we meet?”

  “At your hotel. In the lobby. They do a lovely tea there. Four-thirty?”

  “Four-thirty would be fine,” said Jake. “I’ll be there.” She walked away briskly, into the drizzle. When she was half a block away she stopped and turned. He was still watching her. “Don’t just stand there!” she shouted. “Go get some dry clothes on.”

  Jake waved. “See you at the Peninsula!”

  He walked away in the opposite direction. After a few minutes he broke into a trot, and he didn’t really mind that he was cold and creaky.

  “At least you could’ve asked her if she had a girlfriend,” Sammy called from the bathroom where he was shaving.

  Jake stood by the window watching the rain and the low gray clouds scudding across the harbor. The water was so calm and dark it appeared oily, and the clearly defined wakes left by sampans, barges, and ferries were like ripples made by toy boats on a pond. After he returned to the hotel, he had spent a long time luxuriously soaking in the tub. Now his calves were beginning to tighten up. “I wish this rain would stop.”

  “If it had been me, I would’ve asked if there was a spare girl stashed somewhere for you. The world is full of lonely women pining for a chance to meet some swell guy with a wad of bucks. Here I am, eligible, hand some, modestly well-heeled, and you didn’t even give one of those languishing females a chance. Now I as you, is that friendship?”

  Jake turned his head toward the bathroom. “Hey, I was lucky to get a date.”

  “A date? You call meeting a girl for tea a date?”

  “It was the best I could do.”

  “Did you ask if she had a friend? Huh? Bet you didn’t even fucking try.”

  “It wouldn’t have worked, Sammy.”

  Sammy came out of the bathroom in his skivvies “Okay, Grafton, I’m beginning to get the picture. You just don’t want me around mocking up things between you and your tea-and-crumpets girl.”

  “Nah, that’s not it. Like I said-“

  “Just forget it.” Sammy dismissed Jake with a wave of his hand. “I can find a date for myself. I don’t need your help with my romances. I’m just pointing out this little blot on our friendship.”

  He wore a hurt expression. “But I’ll never forget this, Grafton.

  Never.

  I might even tell Parker that you’re the guy who stole his towel and locked him out of his room.”

  “But you did that!”

  “Yeah, but when roommates get on the outs they start telling lies, and who knows where it’ll stop.”

  “Better not,” Jake said, “or I might have to tell him you’re the Phantom.”

  Lundeen shot him a hard glance, and went over and sat on his bed.

  He looked at Jake and grinned. “That just happens to be true.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. I’m the Phantom,” he said, laughing. “You never suspected, did you?”

  “Are you crazy? They’re looking for some pervert to ship to a mental institution. If they catch you, you’ll go back to the States in a straitjacket. My God….

  You’re kidding me, right?” He carefully examined Lundeen’s face. “You’re pulling my leg again.”

  “Nope. It’s the truth. I am the Caped Crusader. No, that’s Batman and I don’t have a cape, although I could use Cowboy’s towel.” He stood on the bed and struck a pose. “I am the Winged Wraith, the Ghost of Bureaucratic Stupidity.” He sat down heavily. “No, I gotta think of something else.”

  “You’ve flipped out, you stupid jock. Why in the name of God did you do an insane thing like that?”

  “Why did you throw that guy in the alligator pond?

  Because you were fed up with senseless blockheads like him! Well, I’m a little fed up, too. ‘Lieutenant Peckerhead skillfully and courageously avoided heavy, accurate enemy opposition and pressed home a devastating attack on the Bang Whang Tree Farm. His courage and tenacity reflected great credit, blah, blah, blah, and were in the highest traditions of the naval service.”‘ His voice rose to a shout. “I’ve had it up to here with that kind of crap.”

  He stared at Grafton. “So I got to thinking about all this shit and decided to take a shit. And I got a big laugh out of it and I felt a lot better about the whole thing and I wrote another half dozen recommendations for medals and sent them to Rabbit Wilson and the jerk loved them and I didn’t puke.”

  Jake turned toward the window. Through the mist he could barely make out the batwing of a junk.

  He watched a merchant ship with sampans and bardges clustered around it, unloading goods. “Everybody’s a fucking hero,” he said.

  “That’s the crazy part of the whole thing,” Sammy said. “All those guys are heroes. They’re out there risking their asses on every damned flight.

  They dodge the flak and SAMs, they press the targets, they put the bombs right on the money. Flight pay sure doesn’t cover it. They deserve the medals.” He stood up and kicked the footboard of the bed.

  “For what? Tell me what! I sure as hell would like to know.”

  “I wish I knew . . .” Jake turned to face Sammy “You ready for lunch?”

  Sammy didn’t answer right away. “Yeah. I guess so.

  They were alone in the elevator. “I didn’t do that last job,” said Sammy.

  “I retired before the skipper of the ship got really pissed. Somebody else did that last one.

  “I hope you stay retired.”

  “Yeah, I think I’m gonna. I like to fly too much. The elevator doors opened at the lobby level but Sammy didn’t move. “Maybe there’SAReason for it all-some kind of reason that makes sense-and I’m just not smart enough to figure it out.”

  “I hope so,” Jake said, thinking of the flak, the missiles, and of Morgan. “I really hope so.”

  They walked into the lobby. “I wish you had asked her if she had a girlfriend.”

  “Next time.”

  Jake munched on a cookie that was too dry and sweet for his taste.

  He was thirsty but the darkening tea was still too hot to drink. He wanted a beer. His eyes wandered to the ivory-colored pillar behind her.

  It was as thick as four men and mounted on a marble base and gilded at the top. The high ceilings were gilded as well “I can see you don’t want to talk about it,” said Callie. Her chair faced the same direction as his and they had to turn awkwardly to speak. The tea and cookies-“biscuits” the Chinese waiter had called them –were on a low table between their chairs. “Tell me about the flying part. You really like that part of it, don’t you?” She sipped her tea, waiting for him to answer. Without her hat her face was rounder, softer; she seemed younger. Her hair, which she had neatly brushed out, was less curly.

  The many voices in the spacious lobby reverberated, and Jake had to speak uncomfortably loud to be heard. “Sure, I like the flying.” Why had she brought up the goddamn war? “I used to think that I was the luckiest guy in the world-to be paid by the navy to do something I’d be happy to do for free.”

  “You don’t feel that way any more?”

  “Sometimes I do. Sometimes.” Jake sipped the tea. it needed sugar. He put down the cup knowing he would not pick it up again.

  “Tell me more, Jake. What sort of feeling do you have when you’re flying?

  Do you feel exhilaration? Is it like the feeling I get when I ride a roller coaster?”

  “Sometimes it’s like a roller coaster. But that’s not the true feeling of it.” As Jake sought the words, Callie’s eyes peered at him above her teacup.

  “Well,” said Jake. “It’s like when you were a kid and you pretended you were sick so you could stay home fr
om school. The rest of the world is working, at school, in factories, in offices. But there you are, sitting in your cockpit, feeling like you’re getting away with something, flying smoothly along enjoying the sky and the clouds and looking down at the earth. You are free and unfettered and feel privileged you can fly.” Jake paused. “But on the ground a pilot is like a man waiting for a train. He’s restless, anxious to get away. A pilot just bides his time until his plane can take him away again, into the air. He feels like a visitor when he’s on the ground.”

  Callie put down her cup. “I like the way you put that.” Jake had felt his voice growing hoarse as he talked “I’m awfully thirsty. Why don’t we move to the bar?

  They could sit facing each other now, and the chairs were more comfortable than those in the lobby. Callie had ordered a gin and tonic, and Jake was halfway through a bottle of San Niguel beer. There were only a few people in the bar, and the piano was unmanned “I’m not sure you enjoyed the tea,” Callie said.

  Jake smiled. “I guess I felt out of place. they don’t have many teas where I come from.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “A small town in Virginia, called Ridgeville. It’s in southwestern Virginia, not too far from the North Carolina border. Not a hell of a lot happens there. Jake took a swig of beer. “Where’re you from, Callie?

  “Chicago. Hyde Park. The neighborhood around the University of Chicago.

  My father teaches in the business school, and my mother’s in the foreign languages department.”

  “Did you go there?”

  “Most certainly. It was preordained. I did both my undergraduate and graduate work there-in foreign languages, of course.”

  “A real family affair,” said Jake.

  “That was the problem. Both Mom and Dad assumed that I would pursue an academic career. They were pretty upset when I took the foreign service exam and more upset when I passed it. They pleaded with me to go on for a doctorate, but-as the saying goes I wanted to see the world,”

  “And you wanted to be your own person.”

  “That was a good part of it, sure.”

  “You must speak Chinese, then,” said Jake.

  “Uh-huh. I speak Mandarin mostly, and I’m studying Cantonese here.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “Chinese-spoken Chinese, that is-isn’t as difficult to learn as many people think. The grammar is easy Reading it, though, is quite a challenge.”

  “Can you read it?”

  “Only a little. It takes years to develop competency. Basically it’s sheer memorization.”

  Jake looked at Callie’s glass. “Guess you’re not ready for a refill.”

  “Go ahead. Please don’t wait for me.”

  Jake merely looked up and a young Chinese waiter came immediately to their table. He pointed to the empty beer bottle. “Just mine.”

  “I’d like to know about your hometown,” said Callie. “What do people do there?”

  “They farm mostly, grow a lot of vegetables. Those who don’t farm sell stuff to those who do.”

  “Tell me something that captures the flavor of the place.”

  Jake thought a moment, then said, “The last time I was home on leave, the big news in Ridgeville, VA, was that the movie projector in the Plaza had been broken for two months. The guy who owns the Plaza, who’d been promising everybody for months that he’d buy a new projector, finally admitted that maybe a new projector was too expensive-and the Plaza’s the only theatre in town.”

  “What a tragedy!” said Callie with a laugh.

  “Yep- And the other big news was that Sam Chaplain’s sixteen-year-old daughter-Sam runs the Ford dealership-had gotten pregnant.”

  “No!”

  “For the second time.”

  “Really?” said Callie, breaking up. “I bet I know when it happened.”

  Jake grinned. “You do?”

  “Uh-huh. It happened one night soon after the projector broke down at the Plaza.”

  Jake laughed. “You got it! And you know what There were about fifteen other women in town who also just happened to be about two months pregnant.”

  “I think we should drink to the Plaza.” Callie lifted her glass. “May it quickly get a new projector.”

  Their glasses clinked.

  “But be honest, Jake. Do you like Ridgeville?”

  “Actually I do. I grew up there, went to high school there. I liked working on Dad’s farm, and I like the hunting and fishing, which I did a lot of. Maybe everybody knows too much about everybody else, an you have the feeling of living in a goldfish bowl, but the people are friendly and ready to help you if you’ve got a problem. Sure, we’ve got our bad apples, but most people are okay. I’ve got a few friends there who I’ve known all my life and I feel they’ll be my friends, and I’ll be theirs, until I die.”

  She asked about his friends and he told her about the impromptu beer and skinny-dipping party at Caldwel Lake following a church-sponsored picnic; he told her about the time he lost his brakes in his ‘57 Chevy on Hodam Mountain when he and his buddies were returning from a hunting trip and how he wiped out an historic marker; and he told her some other stories that made her laugh.

  She laughed easily. When she asked again about his flying he told her how he had learned to fly, not in the navy, but in a Cessna 140 at a grass strip on the edge of town. He’d taken his first lesson at fifteen and had gotten his private pilot’s license on his seventeenth birthday, the first day that he could legally take his flight exam. The next day his father agreed to go flying with him, to be Jake’s first passenger.

  “Were you nervous?”

  “I was excited, confident. Eager to show off.”

  “What about your dad?”

  “Well, he was pretty nervous at first. Kept asking me about the instruments and controls and whether I’d checked everything. But after a while he realized I Knew what I was doing, and he enjoyed the rest of the flight.”

  “Was he proud of you?”

  “I guess he was. I know I was.”

  “That’s quite an accomplishment, getting your pilot’s license on your seventeenth birthday.”

  “It’s not unusual, others have done it.”

  “I think you’re just being modest.”

  Jake gestured to the waiter for another round of drinks. He noticed the bar was busier, and he heard crisply enunciated British voices.

  “I’m going to be in great shape for tonight,” said Callie. Jake looked at her quizzically. “A CODEL-A congressional delegation-arrived yesterday. The CG, sorry, the consul general-is having a reception for them tonight at his place. I don’t think he’d appreciate it if I passed out on the carpet.”

  “Do you want to go?” said Jake. He had a sinking feeling.

  “I’m not terribly excited about going.”

  “Why don’t you bag it, then?”

  “I should be there. It’s part of my job.”

  “How’s that?”

  “One of my collateral duties is that I’m the CODEL control officer and-“

  “Why aren’t you out controlling them now?”

  “They wanted to go shopping, so I have some time off. Theoretically, they’re here to look at what differences Nixon’s trip has made in Chinese attitudes toward America. We always have a difficult time figuring out how to handle CODELS.”

  “Handle ‘em roughly. Without mercy. Just the way the voters handle them.”

  He enjoyed her laughter “Maybe take them on sightseeing tours.”

  “You’re right. I’m sure we’ll roll out the red carpet but that red carpet is going to lead straight out of the consulate.”

  “Smart. Keep ‘em busy and out of your hair. Probably all they want is to shop anyway.”

  “That’s part of it, no doubt. But there’s political hay to be made, too.

  If relations with China open up, they’ want to take some of the credit.”

  The bastards, Jake thought, staring into his glass.
They go on junkets while good men die going after targets that aren’t worth a pint of piss.

  Callie said, “A penny for your thoughts?”

  Jake looked up and met her eyes. “A plugged nickle would be more appropriate.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  He didn’t want to get into it. “No,” he said finally “What about your other work at the consulate? You work involving visas? How do you like it?”

  “There’s a lot of paperwork, a lot of drudgery. But there’re things about it I like, too. I work in the nonimmigrant visa office and enjoy talking to the young people who want to study in the U. S. Often the people are recent refugees from Red China who unfortunately cannot prove that they’ll return to Hong Kong when they finish their education. And that’SARequirement for a student visa. These refugees give a picture of the mainland you can’t get elsewhere. Some of the stories they tell about how they escaped are awesome.” Callie had been holding her drink in her hands. Now she put it down and leaned toward Jake. “Let me tell You about a boy I interviewed last week. A nice looking boy, named Wang Chiang. Eighteen years old, small for his age but strong. He escaped six weeks ago by swimming across Deep Bay to the New Territories. He and his-“

  “How far did he have to swim?”

  “About seven miles.”

  Jake whistled. “That took a lot of stamina. And guts.”

  “A lot of guts,” said Callie. “Chiang, which is his given name, and his older brother-by a year, I think hid in the hills of China for days, waiting for the conditions to be right to swim the bay. They wanted a dark night so they couldn’t be easily spotted and not much wind so they wouldn’t have to fight the waves. On a night when the weather was overcast and drizzly like today, I imagine-they slipped into the bay. They didn’t take the shortest route, about three miles, because it’s heavily patrolled. Partway across, Chiang’s brother began to tire, then he got severe cramps.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Yes. Chiang told his brother to float, to rest, hoping that the cramps would go away. But the cramps stayed bad. The brother swallowed water and coughed a lot. Chiang tried to hold him up, but eventually they both went under. Chiang couldn’t see anything-the water was black-and his lungs were about to burst. His brother was clutching at him. He had to fight loose of his grasp.”