The golf course was in a valley. Hacked out of the jungle were long, rolling fairways and manicured greens with sand traps and fluttering hole flags. Somewhere up there in the lush tropical foliage beyond the rough was the base fence, a ten-foot-high chain-link affair topped by barbed wire. Beyond the base fence were some of the world's poorest people, kept in line by a Third World military establishment and ruled by a corrupt, piss-pot tyrant. The native laborers who maintained this golf course, and were of course not allowed to play on it, were paid the magnificent sum of one U.s.
dollar a day as wages.
The whole damned scene was ludicrous, especially if you were working on your fourth drink of the hour. The best thing was not to think about it, not to contemplate that vast social chasm between the men running lawrunowers and raking sand traps and the half-tanked fool driving this shiny little made-in-Japan golf cart. Best not to dwell on the shared humanity or the Grand Canyon that separated their dreams and yours.
The heat and humidity made the air thick, oppressive, but it was tolerable here in the golf cart with the faded canvas top providing shade. Jake stuck to piloting the cart while Flap drove, chipped and putted.
"Hotter than hell," Jake told Flap.
"Yeah. Fucking tropical rain forest." "Jungle." "Rain forest. Nobody gives a shit about jungle, but they bleed copious dollars over rain forest." "Why is that?" "I dunno. I got a seven on that last hole." "That's a lot of strokes. You aren't very good at this." "When I play golf, I play a lot of it.
The object of the game is whacking the ball." "Keep your own score. I'm just driving." "Driver has to keep score. That's the way it's done at all com9 R the top clubs. Pebble Beach, Inverness, everywhere. Gimme a six on the first hole and a seven on this one." "You wouldn't cheat, would you?" "Who? Me? Of course I'd cheat. I'm a nigger, remember?" Jake wrote down the numbers and put the cart in motion.
"You shouldn't call yourself a nigger. It isn't right." "What do you know about it? I'm the black man." "Yeah, but I have to listen to it. And I don't like the word." "Bet you used it some yourself." "When I was a kid, yeah. But I don't like it." "Just drink and drive. It's too damn hot to think." "Don't use that word. I mean it." "If it'll make you happy," "I'm out of booze." "Well, you can get drunk tonight. Right now you can sit half-tanked and enjoy the pleasure of watching the world's greatest black colored Negro African-American golfer while you contemplate your many heinous sins." "It seemed like a good day for a drunk." "I've had days like that." The problem was, Jake finally admitted to himself, somewhere along the fourth fairway, that he had no dreams. Everyone needs dreams, goals to work toward, and he didn't have any. That fact, and the gin, depressed him profoundly.
He didn't want to be skipper of a squadron, or an admiral, or a farmer. Nor did he want to be an executive vice president in charge of something or other for some grand, important corporation, luxuriating in his new Buick and his generous expense account and his comfortable semi-custom house in an upscale real estate development and his blond wife with the big smile, big tits and purse full of supermarket coupons. He dit want a stock portfolio and ie n't want to spend his mornings poring over the Wall Street Journal to see how rich he was.
Just for the record, he also didn't give a damn about French novels and doubted if he ever could.
He didn't want anything. And he didn't want to be anything.
What in hell do people do who don't have any dreams?
True, he had once wanted to be a good attack pilot. To walk into the ready room and be accepted as an equal by the best aerial warriors in the world. He had achieved that ambition. And found it wasn't worth a mouthful of warm spit.
He had worked awful hard to get there, though.
That was something. He had wanted something and worked hard enough to earn it. And he was still alive. So many of them weren't. He was.
That was something, wasn't it?
He was still thinking about that two holes later when Flap dropped into the right seat of the cart after a tee shot and said, "There's somebody in the jungle up by the next hole." "How do you know?" "Two big birds flew out of there while I was in the tee box." "Birds fly all the time," Jake pointed out.
"That's the jungle. There's zillions of "em." "Not like that." Jake Grafton looked around. He and Flap were the only people in sight. There weren't even any Filipino groundskeepers. "So?" "So I'm going to hit this next one over into the jungle on that side, then go in there to look for the ball. You just sit. the cart and look stupid." "I've heard that some locals like to crawl under the fence and rob people on this course." "I've heard that too." "Let's get outta here. You don't need to play hero." "Naw. I'll check 'em out." con'I hear they carry guns." "I'll be careful. Just stop up there by my ball and let me slap it over into the jungle." "Don't go killing anybody." "They're probably just groundskeepers working on the perimeter fence or something." "I mean it, Le Beau, you simple green machine shit. Don't kWill anybody." "Sure, Jake. Sure." So Flap addressed his ball in the fairway and shanked it off into the rough. He said a cuss word and flopped into the cart. Jake motored over to the spot where the ball had disappeared into the foliage and stopped the cart. They were still sixty yards or so short of the green.
"I think this is the spot." "Yeah." Flap Le Beau climbed out and headed for the jungle, his wedge in his left hand.
Jake examined his watch-5:35 P.m. The shadows were getting longer and the heat seemed to be easing. That was something, anyhow. Damned Le Beau!
Off chasing stickup guys in this green shit-if there were any stickup guys. Probably just a couple of birds that saw a snake or something.
He waited. Swatted at a few bugs that decided he might provide a meal. Amazing that there weren't more bugs, when you thought about it. After all, this was the jungle, the real genuine article with snakes and lizards and rain by the mile and insects the size of birds that drank blood instead of water.
Jake had seen enough jungle to last a lifetime in jungle survival school in 1971, on the way to Vietnam that first time. They held the course in the jungle somewhere around here. He ate a snake and did all that Tarzan shit, back when he was on his way to being a good attack pilot.
For what?
That had been a stupid goal.
It had been a stupid war, and he had been stupid. Just stupid.
He was still sitting in the cart five minutes later trying to remember why he had wanted to be an attack pilot all those years ago when Flap came out of the jungle up by the green and waved at hiiin to come on up. He was carrying something. As Jake got nearer he saw that Flap had a submachine gun in his right hand and his golf club in his left. The shaft of the club was bent at about a sixty-degree angle six inches or so up from the head.
He pulled the cart alongside Flap and stopped. "Is that a Thompson?" "Yeah. There were two guys. One had a machete and one had this." Flap tossed the bent club in the bin in back of the cart.
"Is it loaded?" Flap eased the bolt back until he saw brass, then released it. "Yep." "Did you kill them?" "Nope. They're sleeping like babies." Jake got out of the cart. "Show me." "What do you want to see?" "Come on, Le Beau, you moron. I want to see that these dumb little geeks are still alive and that you didn't kWill them just for the fucking fun of it." Jake took three steps and entered the foliage.
Flap trailed along behind.
The vegetation was extraordinarily thick for the first five or six feet, then it thinned out somewhat and you could see.
For about ten feet.
"Well, where are they?" Flap elbowed by him and led the way. One man lay on his face and the other lay sprawled ten feet away, on his back.
Jake rolled the first man over and checked his pulse. A machete lay a yard away. Well, his heart was still beating.
Jake picked up the machete and went over to the second man. He was obviously breathing. As Jake stood there staring down at him, taking in the sandals, the thin cotton shirt and dirty gray trousers, the short hair and brown skin and broken teeth, the man's eyes opened. Wide.
In terror. He tried to sit up.
"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?" con'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 tms 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, MELCOM THE IN TRUD ER S which meant that when two A-6's 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 WA-MM oRather BusThat, 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 BN-SL 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.
A
ll 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 MiGo or F-4, man. Look, the Also light is Wumin-was 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.
Stephen Coonts - Jake Grafton 6 - Intruders Page 23
