The Intruders (25 page)

“Hey. You doing okay?”

His eyes left Jake and went behind him. Jake glanced that way. Flap
was standing nonchalantly with the Thompson cradled in his left arm,
peering lazily around. Yet his right hand was grasping the stock and
his forefinger was on the trigger.

The man slowly got to his feet. He almost fell, then caught himself by
grabbing a tree.

“Grab your buddy and get back across the fence.”

The Filipino worked on his friend for almost a minute before he stirred.
When he had him sitting up, he looked at the two Americans. Jake jerked
his head at the fence, then turned and headed for the fairway. Flap
followed him.

Jake tossed the machete into the bin beside Flap’s rented golf bag and
the bent club. Flap dumped the Tommy gun there too and sat down in the
passenger seat.

“You’re really something else, Grafton.”

“What do you want to do? Play golf or discuss philosophy?”

:’I've heard it said that golf is philosophy”

“It’s hot and I’m thirsty and a little of your company goes a hell of a
long way.”

“Yeah. Tell you what, let’s go see what the rest of this course looks
like. Drive on.” He flipped his fingers and Jake pressed the
accelerator. The cart hummed and moved. “Just drive the holes and
we’ll ride along like Stanley and Dr. Livingston touring Africa.
Nothing like an evening drive to settle a man’s nerves and put
everything into perspective.

When we get back to the clubhouse, I’ll buy you a drink.

Maybe later we can go find two ugly women.”

“How ugly?”

“Ugly enough to set your nose hair on fire.”

“That’s not ugly.”

“Maybe not,” Flap said agreeably. “Maybe not.”

THE DAYS AT SEA OUICKLY BECAME RouruTE. THE oNLY vAiuables were the
weather and the flight schedule, but even so, the possible permutations
of light and darkness, storms and clouds and clear sky and the places
your name could appear on the flight schedule were finally exhausted. At
some point you’d seen it all, done it all, and tomorrow would be a
repetition of some past day. So, you suspected, would all the tomorrows
to come.

Not that the pilots of the air wing flew every day, because they didn’t.
The postwar budget crunch did not permit that luxury. Every third day
was an off day, sprinkled with boring paperwork, tedious lectures on
safety or some aspect of the carrier aviator’s craft, or–snore!-another
NATOPS quiz.

Unfortunately, on flying days there were not enough sorties to allow
every pilot to fly one, so Jake and the rest of them took what they
could get and solaced themselves with an occasional ugly remark to the
schedules officer, as if that harried individual could conjure up money
and flight time by snapping his fingers.

On those too-rare occasions when bombs were the main course-usually Mark
76 practice bombs, but every now and then the real thing-Jake Grafton
managed to turn in respectable scores. Consequently he was a section
leader now, MEL_

THE IN TRUD ER S

which meant that when two A-6s were sent to some uninhabited island in
the sea’s middle to fly by, avoid the birds, and take photographs, he
got to lead. He led unless Colonel Haldane was flying on that launch,
then he got to fly the colonel’s wing. Haldane was the skipper, even if
his CEP was not as good as Jake’s. Rank has its privileges.

Of course Doug Harrison reminded the skipper of his earlier commitment
to letting the best bomber lead. Haldane’s response was to point to the
score chart on the bulkhead. “When you get a better CEP than mine, son,
I’ll fly your wing. By then my eyes will be so bad I’ll need someone to
lead me around. Until that day

“Yessir,” Harrison said as Ws squadron mates hooted.

Jake had been spending at least half his time in the squadron
maintenance department, and now the skipper made it official. Jake was
to assist the maintenance officer with supply problems.

The squadron certainly had supply problems. Spare parts for the planes
were alinighty slow coming out of the Navy supply system. The first
thing Jake did was to sit down with the book and check to see if the
requisitions were correctly filled out. He found a few errors but
concluded finally that the supply sergeant knew what he was doing. Then
he sat down for a long talk with the sergeant.

Armed with a fist of all the parts that were on back order, he went to
see the ship’s aviation supply officer, a lieutenant commander in the
Supply Corps, a staff corps that ranked with law and medicine. Together
they went over Jake’s list, a computer printout, then sorted through the
reams of printouts that cluttered up the supply office. Finally they
went to the storerooms, cubbyholes all over the ship crammed with parts,
and compared numbers.

When Jake went to see Colonel Haldane after three days of this, he had
several answers. The erroneous requisitions were easily explained-there
were actually fewer than one might expect. Yet the Marine sergeant was
the odd man out with the Navy supply clerks, who were giving him no
help.

The system would not work if the people involved were not cooperating
fully and trying to help each other.

The most serious problem, Jake told the colonel, was the on the load-out
manifest when the ship put to sea.

that should be aboard the ship weren’t. Related to this problem was the
fact that the supply department had stored some of its inventory in the
wrong compartments, effectively losing a substantial portion of the
inventory that was aboard.

This, he explained, was one reason the clerks were less than helpful
with the squadron supply sergeant-they didn’t want to admit that they
couldn’t find spare parts that their own records showed they had.

Lieutenant Colonel Haldane went to see CAG, the air wing commander, and
together they visited the ship’s supply officer, then the executive
officer. Jake didn’t attend these meetings but he read one of the
messages the captain of the ship sent out about shortages in the
load-out manifest.

Sparks were flying somewhere. Two chief petty officers in the supply
department were given orders back to the States.

Soon parts began to flow more freely into the squadron’s maintenance
department. One evening the supply sergeant stopped Jake in the
passageway and thanked him.

It was a pleasant moment.

One day the flight schedule held a surprise. From the distant top
branches of the Pentagon aviary came tasking for flights to photograph
estuaries along the coast of North Vietnam. Told to stay just outside
the three-mile limit, the air crews marveled at these orders. They
knew, even if the senior admirals did not, that even if the North Viets
were preparing a mighty fleet to invade Hawaii and they managed to get
photographs of the ships, with soldiers marching aboard carrying signs
saying WAmm oR BusT, the politicians in Washington would not, could not
renew hostilities with the Communists in Hanoi. Still, orders were
orders. In Ready Four the A-6 crews loaded 35-mm cameras with film,
hung them around the BNsl necks, and went flying.

There were no enemy warships lurking in the estuaries.

Just a few fishing boats.

It was weird seeing North Vietnam again, Jake told himself as he flew
along at 3,000 feet, 420 knots, dividing his THE IN TRUD E RS

attention between the coast and his electronic
countermeasures–ECM-alarms as Flap Le Beau busied himself with a
hand-held 35-mm camera. The gomers were perfectly capable of squirting
anSA-2 antiaircraft missile out this way, even if he was over
international waters. Or two or three missiles. He kept an eye on the
ECM and listened carefully for the telltale sounds of radar beams
painting his aircraft.

And heard nothing. Not even a search radar. The air was dead.

The land over there on his right was partially obscured by haze, which
was normal for this time of year. Yet there it was in all its pristine
squalor-gomer country, low, flat and half-flooded. The browns and
greens and blues were washed out by the haze. The place wasn’t worth a
dollar an acre, and certainly not anybody’s life. That was the irony
that made it what it was, a miserable land reeking of doom and pointless
death.

Looking at it from this angle four miles off the coast, from the
questionable safety of a cockpit, he could feel the horror, could almost
see it, as if it were as real and tangible as fog.

All those shattered fives, all those terrible memories …

They had fuel enough for thirty minutes of this fast cruising, then they
planned to turn away from the coast and slow down drastically to save
fuel. First Lieutenant Doug Harrison was somewhere up north just now,
taking a peek into Haiphong Harbor. Grafton would meet him over the
ship.

They were fifteen minutes into their mission when Jake first heard
it-three different notes in his ears, notes with a funny rhythm.
Da-de-duh … da-de-duh …

He reached for the volume knob on the ECM panel. Yes, but now there
were four notes.

“Hear that?” he asked Flap.

“Yeah. What is it?”

“Sounds like a raster scan.”

“It’s a MiG or F-4, man. Look, the Al light is Wumin-”

He got no more out because Jake Grafton had rolled the plane ninety
degrees left and slapped on five G’s as he punched out some chaff.

When the heading change was about ninety degrees, Jake rolled out some
of the bank and relaxed the G somewhat.

The coast was behind him and he was headed out to sea.

The Air Intercept fighter remained illuminated and the tone continued in
their ears, although it was back to three notes, a pause, then the three
notes again.

“We’re on the edge of his scan, but he sees us all right,” Flap said.

“Hang on.”

Throttles forward to the stops, Jake lowered the left wing and pulled
hard until he had turned another ninety degrees.

Now he was heading north. He let the nose drop and they slanted down
toward the ocean. Meanwhile Flap was craning his head to see behind.
Jake was looking too, then coming back inside to scan the instruments.
Outside again … too many puffy clouds. He saw nothing.

The adrenaline was really pumping now.

“See anything?” he demanded of Flap.

“You’ll be the first to hear if I do. I promise.”

Probably a Phantom, but it could be a MiG! Out over the ocean, in
international waters. If it shot them down, who would know?

Or care?

Goddamn!

This A-6 was unarmed. Sidewinders could be fitted but Jake had never
carried one, not even in training. This was an attack plane, not a
fighter. And there was no gun. For reasons known only to God and
Pentagon cost efficiency experts, the Navy had bought the A-6 without
any internal guns. Against an enemy fighter it was defenseless.

The raster beat was tattooing their eardrums. Now they had a
two-ring-strength strobe on the small Threat Direction Indicator-TDI.
Almost directly aft.

He did another square corner, turning east again, then retarded the
throttles to idle to lower the engines’ heat signature and kept the
plane in a gentle descent to maintain its speed. The enemy plane
extended north, then turned, not as sharply. Now it was at five o’clock
behind them.

Jake looked aft. Clouds. Oh, sweet Jesus! Dit-da-de-duh,
dit-da-de-duh, dit-da-de-duh … the sound was maddening.

He was running out of sky. Passing eleven hundred feet.

The ocean was down here.

He slammed the throttles full forward. As the engines wound up he
pushed the nose over to convert what altitude he had into airspeed. He
bottomed out at four hundred feet on the altimeter with 500 knots on the
airplane. He pulled, a nice steady four-G pull.

He was climbing vertically, straight up, when he entered the clouds.
Concentrating on the gauges, trying to ignore the insane beat of the
enemy radar, he kept the stick back but eased out most of the G. Still
in the clouds with the nose up ten degrees, he rolled upright and
continued to climb.

The sound of the enemy’s radar stopped. The MiG must have sliced off to
one side or the other, be making a turn to reacquire him. But which
way? He had been concentratso hard on flying the plane that he hadn’t
had time to mg watch the TDL “Right or left?” he asked Flap.

“I dunno.”

The clouds were thinning. Lots more sunlight. Then the A-6 popped out
on top.

Jake looked left, Flap right.

The pilot saw him first, three or four thousand feet above, turning
toward them. An F-4.

“It’s a fucking Phantom,” he roared over the ICS to Flap.

Flap spun and craned over Jake’s shoulder. Then he flopped back in his
seat and held up middle fingers to the world.

Jake raised his visor and swabbed his face. Now the strobe reappeared
on the TDI and the music sounded in his ears.

He reached with his right hand and turned the ECM equipment off.

The plane was climbing nicely. He engaged the autopilot, then turned to
watch the F-4. It tracked inbound for several seconds, then turned away
while it was still a half mile or so out.

Jake took off his oxygen mask and helmet and used his sleeve to swab the
perspiration from his face. He was wearing his flight gloves, so he
used them to wipe his hair. The sweat, made black stains on his gloves
and sleeve. Then he took off one glove and used his fingers to clean
the stinging, salty solution from his eyes.

“Think he did that on purpose?” Flap demanded when he had his helmet
back on and could again hear the ICS.

“How would I know?”

One evening as Jake entered the stateroom, his roommate, the financier,
glanced at him and groaned. “Not another haircut! For heaven’s sake,
Jake, why don’t you just shave your head and be done with it?”

Grafton surveyed his locks in the mirror over the sink.

“What are you quacking about? Looks okay to me.”

“Is this the third haircut this week?”

“Well, I admit, watching these Marines parade off to the barbershop on
an hourly basis has had a corrosive effect on my morals. I feel like a
scuz bucket if I don’t go along.

What are you caterwauling about? It’s my head and it’ll all grow out,
sooner or later.”

“You’re ruining my image, Grafton. Already they are giving me the evil
eye. I feel like a spy in the house of love.”

“You’ve been reading AnaTs Nin, haven’t you?”

“Bartow loaned me an edition in English. Wow, you ought to read some of
that stuff! Ooh la la. It’s broadening my horizons.”

“What are you working on this evening?” The Real had paper strewn all
over his desk, but there wasn’t a stock market listing in sight.

McCoy frowned and flipped some of the pages upside down so that Jake
couldn’t see them. Then he apparently thought better of his actions and
sat back in his chair surveying Grafton. The frown faded. In a moment
he grinned.

“We’re going to cross the line in two days.”

The line-the equator. The task group was heading southeast, intending
to sail around the island of Java and reenter the China Sea through the
Sunda Strait. Of necessity the ship would cross the equator twice.

“So?”

“I’m the only officer shellback in the squadron. Everyone else is a
pollywog, including you.”

A pollywog was a sailor who had never crossed the equator. A shellback
was one who had previously crossed and been duly initiated into the
Solemn Mysteries of the Ancient Order of Shellbacks. It was easy enough
to find out who was and who wasn’t. In accordance with naval
regulations, all shellbacks had the particulars of their initiation
recorded in their service records–ship, date and longitude.

“Too bad you’ll miss out on all the fun,” Jake said carelessly.

McCoy chuckled. “I ain’t gonna miss a thing, shipmate, believe you me.
I’m coming to the festivities as Davy Jones.

But if you’re willing, I could use a little help.”

Jake was aghast. “Help from a lowly pollywog?”

“We’ll have to keep this under our hats. Can’t have scandalous things
like this whispered around, can we? This would be help on the sly, for
the greater glory of King Neptune.” He picked up the documents on his
desk that he had turned over to keep Jake from seeing and passed them to
his roommate.

The next two days passed quickly and pleasantly. Then the great day
arrived. There was, of course, no flying scheduled. All morning
people-presumably shellbacks-bustled around the ship on mysterious
errands, with lots of giggling.

The pollywogs were given strict orders over the ship’s loudspeaker
system. They were to go to their staterooms or berthing compartments
after the noon meal and remain there until summoned into the august
presence of Neptunus Rex, Ruler of the Raging Main. Actually there were
over two dozen Neptunes, selected strictly on senority, i.e., the number
of times they had crossed the line. Initiation ceremonies would be held
simultaneously in ready rooms, berthing areas and mess decks throughout
the ship, and each ceremony would be presided over by Neptunus Rex.

In his stateroom, Jake took off his uniform and pulled on a pair of
civilian shorts. He donned a T-shirt and slid his feet into shower
thongs. Then he settled back to wait for his summons.

wasn’t long in coming. The telephone rang. The duty . “Pollywog
Grafton, come to the ready room.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Jake took off his watch and dog tags. After he checked to ensure that
his stateroom key was in his pocket, he went out and locked the door
behind him.

The ready room was rapidly filling with his fellow wogs.

Jake slipped into his regular seat. Colonel Haldane was lounging in his
seat near the duty officer’s desk, chatting quietly with the executive
officer. Alas, both officers were also wogs and were decked out for the
festivities to come in jeans and Marine Corps green T-shirts. Standing
everywhere around the bulkheads were officers from the air wing and
other squadrons in uniform. Shellbacks. They immediately began to
heckle the Marines, and Grafton.

“You’re in for it now, wogs … Just you wait until King Neptune
arrives … You slimy wogs are in deep and serious …”

The public address system crackled to LIFE. Ding ding, ding ding, ding
ding, ding ding, ding ding. Ten bells. “Ruler of the Raging Main,
arriving.”

A howl of glee arose from the onlookers, who laughed and pointed at the
assembled victims, many of whom were making faces at their tormentors.
Now Flap Le Beau stood in his chair, his arms folded across his chest.
He was wearing a pillowcase on top of his head, held on with a band. His
face was streaked with paint. As the onlookers hooted, he explained
that he was an African king, ruler of the ancient kingdom of BoogalaK
and he demanded deferential treatment from this Rex guy.

The shellbacks successfully shouted him down. Finally he sat, promising
that he would renew his demands when the barnacled one arrived. One row
behind him, Jake Grafton grinned broadly They didn’t have long to wait.
The door was flung open and the Real McCoy stalked in. “Attention on
deck,” he roared. The Marines snapped to attention like they were on
parade. When everyone was erect and rigid, McCoy continued, “All had,
Neptunus Rex, Ruler of the Ragin’ Main.”

“Ha,” the assembled shellbacks shouted lustily.

Here they came, the royal party, led by the air wing commander, the CAG,
who was decked out in a bedsheet. Behind him came Neptunus Rex, wearing
a gold crown that looked suspiciously like it had been crafted of
cardboard and spray painted. He wore swimming trunks and tennis shoes,
but no shirt. His upper arms each bore a tattoo of a well-endowed,
totally naked woman and on his chest was a screaming eagle in flight. A
bedsheet cape flowed behind him. In his hand he carried a cardboard
trident. As he seated himself on his throne-a chair on a platform so
that everyone had a good view-Jake recognized him, as did half the men
in the room. Bosun Muldowski.

The Real McCoy-Davy Jones–took his place at the podium and adjusted the
microphone. He was wearing long underwear, which he and Jake had
decorated with a bottle of iodine last night in a vain attempt to paint
fish, octopi and other sea creatures. Alas, the outfit just looked like
a bloody mess, Jake decided now. McCoy was enjoying himself immensely,
and it showed on his face.

Flap Le Beau stood up again in his chair. “Hey, King! How’s it going?”

McCoy frowned, CAG frowned, Neptune frowned.

“Sit down, wogl Show some respect in the royal presences

“Uh, Davy, you don’t seem to understand. I’m King Flap of Boogalala.
Being a king my very own self, I shouldn’t be here in the company of
these slimy pollywogs. I should be up there on a throne beside ol’
Neptune discussing the many mind-boggling mysteries of the deep and how
he’s making out these days with the mermaids.”

“Well pleaded, King Flap.” The onlookers seemed to disagree, and hooted
their displeasure. Davy looked over at Neptune. “What say you, oh
mighty windy one?”

Neptune scowled fiercely at the upstart Le Beau. “Have you wogs; no
respect? The dominions of the land are irrelevant here upon the briny
deep, where I am sovereign. I suggest, Davy, that the loud-mouth
pretender kiss the royal baby three times.”

“Wog Le Beau, you heard the royal wish. Thrice you shall kiss the royal
baby. Now sit and assume a becoming humility or you will again face the
awesome wrath of mighty Neptune.”

Le Beau sat. He screwed up his face and tried to cry. And almost made
it. A gale of laughter swept the room.

It was good to be a part of this foolishness, Jake Grafton thought, good
to have a hearty laugh with your shipmates, fellow voyagers on this
journey through life. He and the Real had worked hard to get some
laughs, and they succeeded. Many of the wogs were hailed individually
before the royal court and their sins set forth in lurid detail. Major
Allen Bartow was confronted with a book labeled YU Vous Plm-t-really, a
NATOPS manual with a suitable coverfrom which spilled a dozen
Playmate-of-the-Month foldouts. -Reading dirty books, slobbering over
dirty pictures …

shame, shamel I, intoned Davy Jones, and King Neptune pronounced the
sentence: three trips through the tunnel of love.

After about an hour of this nonsense the wogs were led up to the hangar
deck, then across it to an aircraft elevator, winch lifted the entire
Ready Four pollywog/shellback mob to the flight deck. There the
remainder of the initiation ceremonies, and all of Neptune’s verdicts,
were carried out.

The tunnel of love was a canvas chute filled with garbage from the mess
decks. All the wogs crawled through it at least once, the more
spectacular sinners several times. At the exit of the tunnel were
shellbacks with saltwater hoses to rinse off the garbage, but the wogs
were only beginning their odyssey.

Next was the royal baby, the fattest shellback aboard, who sat on a
throne without a shirt. His tummy was liberally coated with arresting
gear grease. Victims were thrust forward to kiss his belly button. He
enthusiastically assisted the unwilling, grabbing ears and smearing
handfuls of grease in the supplicants’ hair. After kisses from every
three or four victims, able assistants regressed his gut from a
fifty-fivegallon drum that sat nearby. A messy business from any angle
…

A visit to the royal dentist was next on the list. This worthy squirted
a dollop of a pepper concoction into his victim’s mouths from a plastic
ketchup dispenser. Expectoration usually followed immediately.

After a visit to the royal barber-more grease—and the royal gymnasium,
the wogs ended their journey with a swim across the royal lagoon, a
canvas pool six inches deep in water. No, Jake learned as he looked at
the victims splashing along, the water was only about one inch deep. It
floated on at least five inches of something green, something with a
terrible smell. Shellbacks arranged around the lagoon busily offered
opinions about what the noisome stuff might be. The wogs slithered
through this mess to the other side, where shellbacks helped them out,
wiped them down, and congratulated them heartily. Without hesitation
Jake flopped down and squirmed his way through the goo while his
squadronmates on the other side-the ones who had beat him overcheered
and offered impractical advice.