The Intruders (36 page)

But it was reaL

Real sharks lived in these waters and they would come-of that he was
absolutely certain.

Lying there in the darkness in this rubberized canvas raft with your
butt in the water, shivering because the water kept wicking up your
flight suit and evaporating, bobbing up and down, up and down,
endlessly, up and down and up and your mind fixated upon sharks, on the
giant predators row upon row of huge, sharp teeth that even now were
owing the blood trail, coming closer, coming up from deep deep down
toward this flimsy little raft that their teeth could slash through as
if it were tissue paper, coming to nip and tear your flesh and eat you!

At some point he realized that he had his Colt automatic in his hand. He
hadn’t thumbed off the safety, thank God, but it was there in his hand
and he couldn’t remember pulling it from its shoulder holster.

He hefted it.

He had always liked the bulk of it, the thirty-nine ounces of smooth
blued steel and oiled wood that promised deadly power if he ever needed
it. Tiger Cole had given it to him.

It held eight big .45 caliber slugs, any one of which would kill
anything from a mouse to a moose. If he shot a shark with this thing,
it was going to die quick.

The problem was that the sharks were under water and bullets don’t go
very far when fired into water. Certainly not these big slow lead
slugs. It would be better if he had his .357, but life wasn’t like
that. if the shark would only stick his head out of the water and hold
still …

His survival knife! It wasn’t all that sharp and, to tell the truth,
wasn’t really much of a knife, but he could stick a shark with it. And
probably get his hand ripped off.

He transferred the automatic to his left hand and got the knife from his
survival vest.

The first thing the sharks would do was bump the raft.

He would feel that, he hoped. They would bump it and rub it with their
sandpaper hide and sniff the blood and finally use their teeth. If they
punctured the raft he would go into the water.Iben he was doomed. Sooner
or later they would get a leg or foot and even if he killed the bastard
that did it, the blood would draw more sharks that would finish the job,
if he hadn’t already bled to death.

He was living a nightmare. if only he could wake up.

He sat in the darkness listening to the slop of the water and waiting
for the bump and shivering from the cold. Every sense was alert,
straining.

How long he sat like that, half-frozen with fear, listening, he didn’t
know, but eventually the moon rose and a sliver of light came through a
gap in the clouds. Flap saw him then.

“Hey, what’s the knife and gun for?”

He was so hoarse that he had trouble with the word and had to clear his
throat before he got it out. “Sharks.”

“You stick that knife into your raft and you’ll be swimming.”

Jake just sat shivering.

“Throw out some shark repellent. You got some in your vest, don’t ya?”

“It don’t work. Ain’t worth shit.”

“Won’t hurt. Throw it out.”

Now he had the problem of what to do with the gun and knife. “Hold the
gun, will ya?”

“Holster it. The knife too. Believe me, there’ll be plenty of time if
you need ‘em.”

When he had tossed the shark repellent packets into the water, Jake felt
better. It was crazy. The repellent—allegedly a mixture of noxious
chemicals and ground-up shark gonads-was worthless: someone had done a
study and said it had no noticeable effect on sharks and was a waste of
government money to acquire. Even though Jake knew all that, throwing
the repellent into the water still gave him a sense that he was doing
something, so he felt better. Less terrorized and more able to cope.

The moonlight helped too. At least if he got a glimpse he could shoot
or stab.

“Sorry I got you into this,” he told Flap.

“If this moonlight cruise causes me to miss Australia, Grafton, I’m
going to kick your ass up between your shoulder blades. I’ve been
sitting here thinking about Australia and those chocolate aborigine
women who will think I’m Sidney fucking Poitier, and believe you me,
this buck nigger is really really ready.”

“Those aborigine men may show you how to use a boomerang for a
suppository if you mess with their women.”

Flap dismissed that possibility with an airy wave. He was shivering
too, Jake noticed.

“Actually I ought to charge you a travel agent’s fee,” Jake told the BN.
“You’ll cadge free drinks on this tale for years.

A silver moon, a tropical lagoon-”

“And you. I wouldn’t pay ten cents Hong Kong money to go on a moonlight
cruise with you. You got all the romance of a They bantered back and
forth for a while, then talked seriously about their situation. The
U.S. Navy would search until Jake and Flap were rescued or the heavies
were convinced they were dead, no matter how long it took. Right this
very moment the ships of the task group were making their best speed
eastward, eating up the sea miles, their screws thrashing the black
water into long foamy ribbons that stretched back under that pale slice
of moon to the horizon. At dawn the carrier would pause in her eastward
charge only long enough to veer into the wind and launch her planes.

Just in case someone was up there right now, Flap got out his radio and
made a few calls. There was no answer, which didn’t upset them.

In the morning. The carrier’s planes would come in the morning. And if
that pirate was anywhere around when the sun came up, he was going to
Davy Jones’s locker faster than the Arizona went to the bottom of Pearl
Harbor.

Eventually the conversation petered out and exhaustion caught up with
them. Both men dozed as their tiny rafts rocked in the long swells.

Jake woke up to vomit. The equilibrium of the raft was too precarious
to stick his head over the side, so he heaved down his chest. He
slopped some sea water over himself to wash the worst of it away.

Seasick. Fuck it all to hell!

He heaved until his stomach was empty, then retched helplessly as his
stomach convulsed.

Flap was philosophical. He wasn’t sick. “These things happen in the
best of families, even to swab jockeys. It won’t kill you. You’re
tough.”

“Shut up.”

“Wait until I tell the guys in the ready room about this.

Sailor Grafton, puking his guts like a kid on the Staten Island ferry.”

“Could you please-”

“It’ll get worse. You’ll see. You’ll think you’re gonna die.

You’re really in for it now. The convulsions had subsided somewhat when
Jake felt the first nudge, just an irregularity in the motion of the
raft.

He almost missed it.

His seasickness was forgotten. He was reaching for the automatic when
Flap said, “Uh-oh. I think a shark bumped me.”

Now he scanned the water. His eyes were adjusted to the moonlight. He
glimpsed a fin break water, for maybe two seconds. Then it was gone.

“Shark,” he told Flap. “I saw one!”

“See what you caused! All that moaning about sharks and you attracted
the sons of bitches.”

Another bump, more aggressive this time. Jake thought he could feel the
grinding from the rough hide rubbing against the fabric of the raft.
They didn’t have to bite itif they rubbed it enough they would rub a
hole through it.

Fear coursed through him, fear as cold as ice water in his veins.
Automatically he had drawn his feet into the raft and tucked his elbows
in, which drove his butt deeper into the water. And there was nothing
between his butt and those teeth but a very thin layer of rubberized
canvas.

He tried to see downward, into the depths where the predators were. Not
enough light. It was like looking into a pot of ink.

“See anything?”

“If I scream,” Flap said, “You’ll know they got me.”

“You asshole! You stupid perverted Marine asshole!”

“They’re just curious.”

Another nudge. Jake thought he saw something pass out to his right that
was darker than the surrounding blackness, but he wasn’t sure.

“You hope,” Jake muttered. “Maybe they’re hungry too.”

A fin broke water fifty feet or so away, slightly to the right of the
way Jake was facing. He thumbed off the pistol’s leveled it and
couldn’t see the sights clearly! He eezed off the shot anyway. The
muzzle flash temporarily him The report was strangely flat. There was
nothing to echo or concentrate the noise. The recoil of the weapon in
his hand felt reassuring though.

He blinked his eyes clear and looked at Flap. He had some kind of knife
in his right hand and was watching the water intently. It wasn’t a
govermnent-issue survival knife.

“What kind of knife is that?”

“Throwing knife. For stabbing.”

“What if you want to cut something?”

“Got another knife for that.”

“What are you, a walking cutlery shop?”

“Just look for sharks, will ya? Try not to shoot me or either of the
rafts. If they get you I may need your boat.”

“Maybe they like dark meat. Can I have your stereo?”

“My roommate has first dibs.”

They sat staring intently at the water near them. Occasionally a shark
nudged them, but the level of aggression didn’t seem to increase.

Maybe they would get out of this with whole hides. Then again . . .

A fin broke water just ten feet to Jake’s immediate right.

He swung the pistol and squeezed the trigger in almost the same motion.
The water seemed to explode.

Dimly he saw a tail slashing furiously and spray cascaded over them. The
rafts rocked dangerously.

In seconds it was over. The shark sounded.

“‘Mink that was the only one?” Flap asked, his voice betraying his
tension for the first time.

“We’ll see.

For some reason the terror that had gripped Jake earlier was gone. He
still had enough adrenaline coursing through his veins to fuel a
marathon and his heart was thudding like a drum, but for the first time
he felt ready to face whatever came.

Nothing came.

If there were any more sharks out there, they stayed away from the raft.
After a while Flap tried his radio again. This time he got an answer.
One of the E-2 Hawkeyes from Columbia was up there somewhere far above,
the crew warm, dry and comfortable.

Flap told them of the pirates, of being shot down, of flying south
trying to keep the A-6 airborne on the backup hydraulic system and
finally ejecting into the sea.

“Welre all right. Both of us are in our rafts, uninjured, and the rafts
are lashed together.”

Jake had his radio out by this time and heard a calm voice say, “We’ll
get planes off at dawn to look for you. You guys check in after sunrise
about every fifteen minutes, okay?”

“Roger that. Keep the coffee hot.”

Jake Grafton spoke up. “Black Eagle, tell the Ops guys that they need
to arm the planes. If anybody shoots at them, they need to defend
themselves vigorously.”

“I’ll pass that along. Wait one while I talk to the ship on the other
radio.”

They sat in the darkness with their radios in their hands.

Finally the radio came back to life. “Five Zero Eight Alpha, just how
sure are you that you were actually shot at? Is there any way the
hydraulic f0ure could have been a coincidence?”

The question infuriated Grafton. “I’ve been shot at before,” he roared
into the radio. “I’ve been shot at and missed and shot at and hit. You
tell those stupid bastards on the ship that we were shot down.”

“Roger. You guys hang tough. Talk to you again fifteen minutes after
sunrise.”

His anger kept Jake warm for about five minutes. Then he was just cold
and tired. With every stitch they wore sopping wet, Jake and Flap
huddled in their rafts and shivered.

After a time their thirst got the better of them and Flap broke out his
two baby bottles full of water. He passed one to Jake, who drank it
quickly, afraid he might spill it.

The moon rose higher and gave more light, when it wasn’t obscured by
clouds.

Eventually, despite the conditions, exhaustion claimed them and they
dozed. Jake’s mind wandered feverishly.

Faces from the past talked to him-Callie, his parents, Tiger Cole,
Morgan McPherson-yet he couldn’t understand what they were saying. Just
when he thought he was getting the message, the faces faded and he was
half-asleep in a bobbing raft, wet and cold and very miserable.

Occasionally they talked. Once Jake asked Flap, “If that attack last
month against the Russians had been real, do you think we would have
made it?”

“I dunno.”

“Think we would have hit the cruiser?”

“Maybe.,’ “They said it was eighty percent probable.”

“I say maybe. I don’t do numbers.”

“I think we would be dead.”

“Maybe,” Flap said.

Time passed too slowly, every minute seemed like an hour. The
temptation to call Black Eagle to see if he was still up there was very
strong and hard to resist. Jake got his radio out twice. Each time he
stowed it without turning it on. He might need all the juice in those
batteries tomorrow.

Wasting battery power now would be stupid.

The worsening sea state brought them fully and completely awake. The
swells were bigger and the wind was stronger.

At the top of each swell the rafts pitched dangerously, forcing each man
to hang on tightly to keep from being thrown out. They made sure they
still had a lanyard attached to each raft.

They had been hanging on to their seats in their frail craft for an
eternity when Flap said, “You shouldn’t have called the heavies stupid
bastards.”

“I know.”

“Someone will ream you out when we get back.”

“Gives me something to look forward to.”

Gradually they became aware that the sky was lightening up. Dawn. It
was coming.