The Intruders (38 page)

The diesel fuel was running into the bilges there.

The fire fit with a whoof.

Jake eased his head around the corner of the ladder, and jerked it back
just in time. Bullets spanged into the condenser.

The fire was spreading in the bilges. Already the smoke was dense, the
lights barely visible.

This couldn’t be the only ladder topside. The other ladder must be on
the starboard side. Trying not to breathe the smoke, he hurried that
way.

Coughing and gagging, he found the ladder.

Was there someone up here waiting for him?

“Come on, Jake.” Flap’s voice.

He was having trouble breathing and ha feet were getting damned hot.
Somehow he lost the rifle. He scrambled up EL

the ladder on all fours, slipped and slammed his head against a step and
slid a couple steps before he caught himself.

Hands grabbed him and pulled. He kept scrambling and somehow they made
the deck.

“I’ve been shot.”

“Let’s get over the side or you’ll get shot again. There’s at least
four of them forward.”

“‘Where?”

“We go off the fantail. Ship’s sideways in the river.”

They went that way, Jake barely able to walk. He took deep breaths,
trying to get enough oxygen. Spots swam before his eyes. “They’ll
shoot us in the water.”

“It’s our only chance. Come on.”

Flap tossed his AK-47 into the water, then jumped after it. Jake
followed.

The darkness was almost total now. Jake was only able to swim with his
right arm. His left side felt like it was on fire. Several times he
got mouthfuls of water, so he swallowed them. It tasted good.

He was struggling. More water in his mouth and nose.

He gagged.

“Just float. I’ve got you.” And Flap did have him, by the collar of his
flight suit.

Jake concentrated on staying afloat and breathing against the pain in
his side.

Flap was pulling bun backward, so he could see the foreshortened outline
of the ship, and smoke black as coal oozing out amidships. He could
also see the glow of fire coming from a ladder well, apparently the one
on the port side, since he could now see the tip of the bow. All this
registered without his thinking about it, which was good, since he
needed desperately to concentrate on breathing and keeping his head
above water.

They were maybe fifty yards from the slup when he saw muzzle Bashes from
the bow.

“They’re shooting,” he tried to say, but he swallowed more water.

“Relax,” Flap whispered. ‘4uit trying to help. Let me do this.”

Somehow they must have swum out of the main channel, Jake realized,
because the ship was pulling away from them.

The current must be taking her downstream.

The current and the darkness saved them. When the twenty-millimeter
cannon on the bow opened up, the bullets hit downstream, abeam the ship.
Bursts split the night for almost a minute, but none of the shells even
came close. -.q pipe, “I NEVER SAW A KNIFE LIKE THAT BEFORE.”

“Designext it myself,” Flap said. “Call it a slasher.”

Of course Jake couldn’t see the knife now, since they were sitting in
absolute total darkness under a tree in the jungle, but Flap had
borrowed his lighter and gone looking for tree moss. Now he was back
and was cutting up his and Jake’s T-shirts to use as a bandage. He had
inspected the wound in the glow of the fighter when they first got
ashore. “It’s nasty but not deep. You are one lucky white boy. I
think maybe one rib broke, and it ain’t too bad.”

“Feels like one of your knives is stuck in there.”

Jake sat now holding the moss in place while Flap cut up the shirts. The
moss was slowing the bleeding, apparently.

He heard a motorboat coming down the river. They sat silently while it
passed. When the sound had faded, Jake asked, “So what are we going to
do?”

“Not much we can do tonight. There’s an overcast so there wouldn’t be
much light when the moon comes up. The jungle canopy will keep it dark
down here. We’re going to have to just sit tight until morning.”

“Think they’ll come looking for us tonight?”

“In the morning maybe. Maybe not. I hope they come.

We need some weapons. All we have are my knives. Be easier to ambush
them here than around their village, wherever that is.”

“The stabber and the slasher.”

.”Yep.1′ “Where did you learn to throw a knife like that?”

“Taught myself,” Flap told him. “It’s a skill that comes in handy
occasionally.”

Jake moved experimentally. He tried to stretch out and relax to ease
the pain. After a bit he said, “I don’t think their village is Ear
upriver. It was narrowing when we left that ship.”

“We’ll work our way upriver in the morning. We need a boat to get out
to sea.”

“Tell you what, Tarzan, is there any way you could rustle us up some
grub? My stomach thinks my throat is cut.”

“Tomorrow. You like snake?”

“No.”

“Tastes like–”

“Chicken. I’ve heard that crap before. I ate my share at survival
school.”

“Naw. Tastes like lizard.”

“I don’t like them either.”

“Sit up and hold up your arms and let me wrap this thing around YOU Jake
obeyed. When Flap finished he eased his arms back into his flight suit
and zipped it up. “What about bugs?”

“They’re okay as an appetizer, but you expend about as many calories
gathering them as-”

“How are we gonna keep ‘em. from bleeding us dry tonight?”

“Smear your skin with mud.”

Jake was already encased in mud almost to his waist from wading through
the goo to get ashore. He scraped some from ha legs and ankles and
applied it to his face and neck.

After a bit, Flap asked, “How many guys were in the engine room?”

“Two. What happened topside?”

“They pinned me down. I needed a couple grenades and didn’t have them.
Got one of them, though.”

If

“We’re lucky to be alive.”

‘4101rafton, you are the luckiest S.O.B. I know. If that bullet had
been an inch farther right you’d be lying dead in that engine room. It’s
scary-we’re using up oodles of luck and we’re still young men. We’re
gonna be high and dry and clean out of the good stuff before we’re very
much older.”

They lay down on the jungle floor and tried to relax. Lying in the
darkness in the muck, swatting at mosquitoes as the creepy-crawlies
examined them-Kee-ristl Well, at least they weren’t sitting in seawater
to their waist or huddled in a steel compartment waiting for an
executioner to come for them.

After a while Jake said, “Are you ever going to get married?”

“You read my mind. I was lying here hungry and thirsty and miserable as
hell contemplating that very subject. And you? 9 16smart ass!”

“No, seriously-why don’t you tell the Great Le Beau all about it. After
all, before a man commits holy matrimony he should have the benefit of
unbiased, expert counsel. Even if he plans on ignoring the pithy wisdom
he will undoubtedly receive, as you most certainly will.”

“I might get married. If she’ll say yes.”

“Ahli-you haven’t queried your intended victim. Or you have and she
refused in a rare fit of eminent good sense.

Which is it?”

“Haven’t asked.”

“TA-huh.”

“Met her last year in Hong Kong.”

“I met a girl in Hong Kong once upon a time,” Flap replied. “Her name
was … damn! It was right on the tip of my tongue. Anyway, she worked
at the Susy Wong Wherehouse, a couple of blocks from the China Fleet
Club.

You know it? She was maybe sixteen and had long black hair that hung
almost to her waist and exquisite little breasts that–”

“I met an American girl-,’ “Umph.9′

“I knew you’d be interested, seeing how we fly together and all, so I’ll
tell you. Since you aren’t sleepy and we got nothing else to do.” And
he did. He told about meeting Callie, what she looked like, sounded
like, how he felt when he was with her. He told Flap about her parents
and about Chicago, about getting out of the Navy and what she said.

He had been talking for at least half an hour when he finally realized
that Le Beau was asleep.

His side throbbed badly. He changed positions in the detritus of the
jungle floor, trying to find one that would cause the least stress on
his wound. The sharpness of the pain drove his mind back to the pirate
ship, to the prospect of death in a few moments by execution.

Flap threw that knife into that one guy and sliced the other’s On-oat in
what-three seconds? Jake had never seen a man move so fast, nor had he
ever seen a man butchered with a knife. Shot, yes. But not slashed to
death with one swipe of the arm, his throat ripped from ear to ear,
blood spurting as horror seared the victim’s face.

I.Afe is so fragile, so tenuous.

Luckily he had gotten into motion before the surprise wore off the other
two.

And the engine room, the horror as that man came around the engine
shooting and the bullet struck him. Now the scene ran through his mind
over and over, every emotion pungent and powerful, again and again and
again.

Finally be let it go.

He felt like he had that sticker of Flap’s stuck in his side right now.

So those other guys died and he and Flap lived. For a few more hours.

It was crazy. Those men, he and Flap-they were like fish in the sea,
eating other fish to sustain life before they too were eaten in their
turn. Kill, kill, kill.

Man’s plight is a terribly bad joke.

He was dozing when the sound of a motorboat going upriver brought him
fully awake. Flap woke up too. They lay listening until the noise
dissipated completely.

“Wonder what happened to the pirate ship?”

“Maybe it sank.”

“Maybe.”

After the sun came up the foliage was so thick that Jake had to keep his
hand on Flap’s shoulder so that he wouldn’t lose him. Flap moved
slowly, confidently and almost without noise. Without him Jake would
have been hopelessly lost in five minutes.

Flap caught a snake an hour or so after dawn and they skinned it and ate
it raw. They drank water trapped in fallen leaves if there weren’t too
many insects in it. Once they came to a tiny stream and both men lay on
their stomachs and drank their fill.

Other than the noises they made, the jungle was silent. If anyone was
looking for them, they were being remar a quiet.

Jake and Flap heard the noises of small engines and voices for a half
hour before they reached the village, which as luck would have it,
turned out to be on their side of the river. It was about noon as near
as they could tell when they hit the village about a hundred yards
inland. Thatched buts and kids, a few rusty jeep-type vehicles. They
could smell food cooking. The aroma made Jake’s stomach growl.

A dog barked somewhere.

They stayed well back and worked their way slowly down to the riverbank
to see what boats there might be.

There were several. Two or three boats with outboard engines and one
elderly cabin cruiser lay moored to a short pier just a couple of dozen
yards from where Jake and Flap crouched in the jungle. Beyond the boats
was a much larger pier that jutted almost to midstream. Resting against
the T-shaped end of it was the hijacked ship. Above the ship numerous
ropes made a latticework from bank to bank.

Leafy branches of trees dangled from the ropes-camouflage. The
freighter seemed to be held in place against the current mainly by taut
hawsers from the bow and stern that stretched across the dark water to
the river’s edge, where they were wrapped numerous times around large
trees.

From where they lay they could just see the ship’s name and home port:
Che Guevara Habana.

Flap began to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Jake whispered.

“A Cuban freighter. We got shot down and almost killed over a Commie
freighter. If that doesn’t take the cake!”

“My heart bleeds for Fidel.”

“Ain’t it a shame.”

The ship’s cranes were in motion and at least a dozen men were visible.
A large crate was lowered to the pier and six or eight men with axes
began chopping it open Apparendy they didn’t have a forklift.

Inside the box were other, smaller boxes. Pairs of men hoisted these
and carried them off the pier toward the village.

“Weapons,” Flap said. “They hijacked a ship full of weapons.

now?t, “What do you think was in those little boxes just “Machine guns,
I think. Look, aren’t those aminoe boxes?”

“They are. I’ve seen boxes like that before. One time up on the
Cambodian border.”

“Maybe this ship wasn’t hijacked. Maybe those guys met it in midocean
to put aboard a pilot.”

“Then why the SOS?”

Jake shrugged, or tried to. The pain in his side was down to a dull
throb, as long as he held his shoulder still and didn’t take any deep
breaths.

“These dudes are ripping off a Commie weapons shipment,” Flap said
slowly. “Maybe one bound for Haiphong.

Guns and ammo are worth their weight in gokV

“That little cabin cruiser is our ticket out of here, if it isn’t a

“Maybe,” Flap said softly. “We can’t do anything until tonight anyhow,
so let’s make ourselves comfortable and see what we can see. I don’t
see any floodlights anywhere4 these people won’t be working at night.
But that little boat is just too good to be true. The captain we met
yesterday didn’t impress me as the type of careless soul who would leave
a boat where we could swipe it at our convenience.”

After a few minutes Jake muttered, “I haven’t seen the captain yet on
the dock.”

“He’s around someplace. You can bet your ass on that.”

“That ship we set fire to isn’t here either.”

“Maybe they abandoned it. But remember that boat that went down the
river last night, then came back hours later? It was probably that
cruiser there, and it probably rescued everyone left alive. The captain
is here. I can feel him.”