Slide (26 page)

Any moment he would be able to reach the ceiling. He told himself not to be overanxious, to wait until he was surely close up. They had been floating precariously on the surface of the mud for six hours. Another ten or fifteen minutes could be endured.

Brydon fixed his gaze on the dotlike perforations of the paneling, using them to gauge progress.

A quarter-hour went by.

The dots seemed the same size as before. Perhaps, Brydon thought, his weary eyes were tricking him.

After another half hour there could be no doubt.

They were suspended, held up just inches short. The mud, their sadistic enemy, had stopped rising.

25

At 10:30 that night Captain Dodd and Stan Hackley were headed south on Trobuco Road in East Irvine. A half mile past Sand Canyon Avenue they stopped at the main entrance to the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.

One of the sentries came out of the permanent glass-sided booth. He had on a white helmet, white leggings and a blue poncho that glowed whenever light hit it. He also wore glasses that got spattered with rain, so he had to lower his head and look over them when he looked into the car from the driver's window.

Hackley showed his identification.

The sentry didn't ask Dodd for anything. “Straight ahead, second stop, take a right. First brick building you come to.”

“Got it,” Hackley said.

The metal barrier was raised, allowing Dodd to drive in — a bit too fast, because there were two unavoidable eight-inch bumps built up on the roadway to prevent speeding. Dodd didn't see them. The car and the trailer jolted and the pipe in the trailer bounced around.

Hackley stretched, rotated his neck that had just been snapped. “Ever been here before?”

“Obviously not,” Dodd said. “Where'd you get all your pull?”

“It's not pull, it's leverage.”

“We'll see.” Dodd still doubted Hackley could deliver what he'd claimed.

The streets of the air station were deserted. There were hardly any lights on. The rain, for one reason. Also, it was Saturday night and, except for the minimum number of men to satisfy peacetime standby requirements, everyone was on weekend liberty.

Dodd located the brick building, parked in front. They went in. There was a corporal seated behind a desk behind a four-foot-high partition. He wasn't doing anything, not typing or writing or reading or smoking or listening to the radio or anything, just sitting there alone. He had a hat on and no tie. A stenciled sign taped to the partition read:

WAIT YOUR TURN

“Yes, sir?” the corporal said. He was wearing a sidearm.

“Lieutenant Santiano,” Hackley said.

“He's sleeping.”

“Try him.”

“Who are you?”

“Tell him Stan.”

The corporal didn't jump to it. He appraised Hackley and Dodd. They didn't look important. Muddy overalls and jeans, sneakers and moccasins. “Maybe it's something I can handle.”

“Call Santiano,” Hackley insisted with a tinge of
or else
.

The corporal didn't like that. He stood abruptly. The vertical wrinkles between his eyes became more pronounced; his mouth tightened as though getting ready to spit. He seemed on the verge of vaulting over the partition to have a go at Hackley. However, when he was sure both Hackley and Dodd had gotten that impression, he picked up the phone. He guarded the mouthpiece, mumbled into it, put the phone back on the receiver and said, polite, almost as kissass as he'd be to a major's daughter, “Take the corridor to your left, sir. All the way down. You can't miss it.”

The corridor was not well lighted. Government gray-painted walls, scrubbable enamel, asbestos tile underfoot. Closed doors all the way to the only one that was open.

In there was a narrow room mainly furnished with a gray vinyl-covered couch, two armchairs and, shoved against one wall, a wide metal table with an electric coffee maker on it. A twenty-four-inch color television, an older model, was on a shelf higher than everything.

Lieutenant Santiano had his shoes off, shirt unbuttoned four down. Slouched in one of the chairs with his legs crossed and feet up on an arm of the sofa. Although he didn't rise when Hackley and Dodd entered, it was obvious he was a large man, big boned. He probably could have played pro football but was now in his late twenties.

Santiano put his hand out, palm up. Hackley slapped it and introduced Dodd, who got a regular handshake. Santiano offered coffee. Hackley didn't want any. Dodd helped himself. Santiano was smoking a cigar. Hackley asked if he had another and was told it was the last. The ashtray contained several well-chewed stubs, evidence that the night had been dull and lonely. Santiano pulled officer-of-the-day duty one weekend every month. It seemed to him ridiculous that his presence should be both in such demand and unnecessary. To pass the time he'd been watching a war movie starring Dana Andrews, who was supported by a type-casted platoon. There were Dana and his guys firing on the run, using a tank for cover as they charged. One man got hit, spun, threw his arms and legs around and otherwise did his best performance of getting killed in action.

“He was one of the good good guys,” Santiano remarked.

It was difficult to disregard the television. The vertical hold was off so the picture often flopped over for attention.

“Know where they shot that movie?” Santiano asked and answered, “Catalina, on the seaward side. They used to make practically all of them over there. I know a guy they hired a couple of times as technical advisor. All he had to do was sit on his ass for five hundred a week and see that everthing looked real, which, if you think of it, is important, because counting both world wars, Korea and Nam, at least maybe half the guys in this country have an idea what it's really like.”

“Dodd here is a captain in the highway patrol,” Hackley said.

“Looks it,” Santiano said.

Dodd didn't know how to take that. He let it pass.

Santiano puffed up a cloud and through it asked Hackley, “What's the favor?”

“I want to borrow a buzzard.”

“You're crazy.”

Hackley said he was serious.

“What the hell for?” Santiano asked.

“I want to haul some bales of shit up from Baja. How's that?”

Santiano knew better. He got up, went to the window, took a peek out through the metal slats of the venetian blind. “Fucking rain. If it wasn't raining at least I could take a nice walk. This morning one of the mess cooks, actually a baker, went berserk with a cleaver. He wanted to bake pies but because of the weather all the sugar was stuck together. In fifty-pound sacks, like rocks.”

Dodd asked to use the phone. While Hackley and Santiano discussed the weather, Dodd checked in at headquarters and then called Helen. She sounded tense. He told her where he was and not to worry. She didn't tell him she loved him, the way she usually did before she hung up. Dodd decided she was tired. He sure as hell was.

Hackley brought Santiano back to it. “What about it, Harry?”

“Don't you have a chopper over in Newport?”

“Too light. We need one that can take a load.”

“Shit, Stan, you can't just walk into a government installation like this and borrow a buzzard.”

“Why not?”

Santiano shrugged. “I'll get busted.”

“Fix it so there's no chance.”

According to Santiano's expression that wasn't possible.

“We also need a couple of men,” Hackley said.

“What kind?”

“Ground-crew guys, good fast ones, like armament fitters.”

“Those I could let you have easy. Lots of guys in the brig for trying to beat each other to death. Has to be the weather.”

“They'll get paid. Fifty each.”

“Do they have to go up?”

“No.”

“I couldn't let them go up.”

“I promise.”

“You're really putting me on the crapper, Stan, you know that?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I can't let you have a buzzard.”

“We'll have it back in the morning, by noon at the latest. Nobody will ever know.”

“Unless you crack it up or something.”

“Me?”

“I can't, Stan. No way.”

After some silence Hackley told him, “You owe me, Harry.”

It came out level, easy, but there was considerable behind it. It went back to a paddy in Pen-Lem close to the Cambodian border. More fire power than expected from the enemy. Mortars and rifles. Santiano and his patrol were about to be wiped out. Hackley, in a buzzard, came in over the treetops. The enemy threw everything they had at him. Hackley put himself on the line, put the helicopter down, was a big sitting target soaking up hits while Santiano and his men climbed aboard to be lifted to safety. If it hadn't been for Hackley …

Since then the only thing Hackley had asked in return was that Santiano buy for him at the Marine Commissary, where things such as Scotch were cheaper. Hackley didn't like pressuring with such a debt. He apologized to Santiano.

Santiano looked away. “I owe it to you.”

To ease the situation somewhat, Hackley told him, “If you do this favor for me we'll call it even once and for all.”

“Never.”

“You won't do it?”

Santiano grinned, “We'll never be even.”

Hangar 11-R was way out of the way on the extreme northern corner of the far side of the base.

It was a huge reserve hangar presently used to store helicopters that had been brought back from Vietnam. They were HSL-ls, the kind Hackley called “buzzards.” Stowed as close together as possible, they looked like a swarm of grotesque, giant insects at rest. Not a one had been moved or even touched in nearly two years. They were just left sitting there, millions of dollars' worth of aircraft, waiting for some military committee to decide whether they should be sold to private concerns, needy countries or perhaps just scrapped.

Probably one wouldn't ever be missed, certainly wouldn't for only a few hours.

The hangar was so crowded there wasn't room for Dodd to drive the car and trailer in. He backed up to the hangar door.

Hackley went in among the buzzards to look them over. He decided he might as well choose one of those in the row nearest the door. Be easier to get at and get out. He settled on one, examined it inside and all around, paying special attention to the rotor connections, which, he was glad to find, were well protected by layers of grease. He noticed numerous flak and bullet holes along the fuselage. It was jungle camouflaged except in one place on its starboard, where it was named in red paint:

RAQUEL BABY

Obviously out of devotion rather than any likeness.

At 11:30 two men showed up at the hangar door.

“I'm Poss,” one said.

“Ruzkowski,” said the other. “Lieutenant Santiano sent us.”

Poss's left eye along the brow bone and below was red, blue and black, almost swollen closed. Dodd asked who gave it to him. “He did,” Poss indicated Ruzkowski, who was the larger of the two by two-thirds of a head.

“For this,” Ruzkowski contended. His lip was split and puffed.

Hackley told them, “We can't afford any fighting.”

“We're buddies,” Poss assured.

Ruzkowski verified that by smiling painfully and nudging Poss's shoulder with his fist.

“How long will it take to get this buzzard going?” Hackley asked.

“Just turning, you mean?”

“I mean for flight.”

“Not a complete breakdown.”

“No.”

“Well, to look her over and, let's say there's nothing much wrong, to gas her up and everything shouldn't take more than two, three hours,” Poss said.

“Know how to weld?”

“Sure,” Ruzkowski said.

“No bullshit?”

“Why bullshit?”

“Okay, you're hired. But if you fuck off or fight, it's back to brig double-time and no pay,” Hackley told them.

“Santiano said fifty each.”

“Right.”

“Can we see the money?” Poss asked.

Hackley deferred to Dodd, who only had eighty cash. Hackley put up the other twenty.

First Dodd explained what he wanted to do with the pipe. Poss didn't seem to be paying attention, but immediately afterward he used an ordinary lead pencil on the concrete floor to diagram precisely the kind of rig Dodd had in mind. Actually, Poss improved on it, showed how it would work even better with a simple pulley system that could be controlled from inside the buzzard.

They went to work. Dodd wanted to be of help but, after trying for a while, it seemed he was only getting in the way. He stood aside and watched. It amused and amazed him that every so often either Poss or Ruzkowski or both would go out and return with such things as new parts, welding equipment, special tools. They knew where to “requisition” anything, even at that unlikely hour. Once Ruzkowski brought back a portable radio so they had rock music to set a working tempo to.

The engines and rotors were of first concern. No use building a special rig onto a buzzard that couldn't fly. Around 1:00 A.M. they put in some fuel and tried starting the forward engine. It coughed sickly, sputtered, misfired, but Ruzkowski kept at it and soon had it running smooth enough. Then the rear engine. They were at work on it when the headlights of a car beamed through the partially open sliding hangar doors.

That would probably be one of the base's senior officers, a captain or major somebody come to see what the hell was going on, Dodd thought. His personal project, his, had gotten Lieutenant Santiano and these enlisted men in serious trouble. He tried to think quickly of some explanation that might get them off the hook, but nothing came — and that seemed proof of how quixotic the whole thing was. As for himself, it was going to be embarrassing all the way up and down the line, especially up.

A figure appeared in the doorway. Wearing a beige trench coat with the right sleeve hanging empty.