David Morrell - Rambo 1 - First Blood

by First Blood(lit)

  Teasle's voice echoed. 'Galt. Why is that upstairs door unlocked again?'

  'Did I.? We don't have anymore prisoners. The last one just woke up, and I let him go.'

  'It doesn't matter if we have prisoners or not. If you get in the habit of leaving it open when we're empty, then you might start forgetting to lock it when there's some-body down here. So I want the door locked regardless. I don't like to say this - it may be tough getting used to a new job and a new routine, but if you don't learn to be careful, I might have to look for somebody else.'

  Rambo was as cold as he had been in Dobzyn's office, shivering. The lights in the ceiling were too close to his head; even so, the place seemed dark. Iron and cement. Christ, he should never have let Teasle bring him down. Walking across from the courthouse, he should have broken Teasle and escaped. Anything, even being on the run, was better than thirty-five days down here.

  What the hell else did you expect? he told himself. You asked for this, didn't you? You wouldn't back off.

  Damn right I wouldn't. And I still won't. Just because I'll be locked up, doesn't mean I'm finished. I'll fight this as far as it goes. By the time he's ready to let me out, he'll be fucking glad to be rid of me.

  Sure you'll fight. Sure. What a laugh. Take a look at yourself. Already you're shaking. Already you know what this place reminds you of. Two days in that cramped cell and you'll be pissing down your pantlegs.

  'You've got to understand I can't stay in there.' He could not stop himself. The wet. I can't stand being closed in where it's wet.' The hole, he was thinking, his scalp alive. The bamboo grate over the top. Water seeping through the dirt, the walls crumbling, the inches of slimy muck he had to try sleeping on.

  Tell him, for God's sake.

  Screw, you mean beg him.

  Sure, now when it was too late, now the kid was coming around and trying to talk himself out of this. Teasle could not get over the needlessness of it all, how the kid had actually tried his damndest to work himself down here. 'Just be thankful it is wet,' he told the kid. 'That we hose everything down. We get weekend drunks in here, and come Mondays when we kick them out, they've been sick up the walls and all over the place.'

  He glanced at the cells, and the water on the floor made them look clean, sparkling. 'You may be careless with that door upstairs Galt,' he told him. 'But you sure did a job on those cells. Do me a favor will you, go up and get some bedding and an outfit for this kid? You,' he told the kid, 'I guess the middle cell is fine. Go in, take off your boots, your pants, your jacket. Leave on your socks, your underwear, your sweat shirt. Take off any jewelry, any chain around your neck, any watch -. Galt, what are you looking at?'

  'Nothing.'

  'What about the gear I sent you for?'

  'I was just looking. I'll get it.' He hurried up the stairs.

  'Aren't you going to tell him again to lock the door?' the kid said.

  'No need.'

  Teasle listened to the rattle of the door being unlocked. He waited, then heard Galt lock the door after him. 'Start with the boots,' he told the kid.

  So what else did he expect? The kid took off his jacket.

  'There you go again. I told you start with the boots.'

  'The floor is wet.'

  'And I told you get in there.'

  'I'm not going in there any sooner than I have to.' He folded his jacket, squinted at the water on the floor, and set the jacket on the stairs. He put his boots beside it, took off his jeans, folded them and put them on top of the jacket.

  'What's that big scar above your left knee?' Teasle said. 'What happened?'

  The kid did not answer.

  'It looks like a bullet scar,' Teasle said. 'Where did you get it?'

  'My socks are wet on this floor.'

  'Take them off then.'

  Teasle had to step back to keep from being hit by them.

  'Now take off your sweat shirt,' he said.

  'What for? Don't tell me you're still looking for my I.D. cards.'

  'Let's just say I like a thorough search, that I want to see if you've anything hidden under your arms.'

  'Like what? Dope? Grass?'

  'Who knows? It's happened.'

  'Well not me. I gave up that stuff a long time ago. Hell, it's against the law.'

  'Very funny. Just take off your sweat shirt.'

  For once the kid did what he was told. As slow as he could, of course. His stomach muscles showed tight, and there were three straight scars across his chest.

  'Where did they come from?' Teasle said surprised. 'Knife scars. What the hell have you been up to anyway?'

  The kid squinted at the light and did not answer. He had a large triangular patch of black hair on his chest. Two of the scars cut through it.

  'Hold up your arms and turn around,' Teasle said.

  'That isn't necessary.'

  'If there was a quicker way to search you I would sure have found it. Turn around.'

  There were dozens of small jagged scars across the kid's back.

  'Jesus, what's going on here?' Teasle said. 'Those are lash marks. Who's been lashing you?'

  The kid still did not answer.

  That's going to be some interesting report the state police sends back on you.'

  He hesitated: now came the part he hated.

  'All right, pull down your shorts.'

  The kid looked at him. And looked at him.

  'Don't give me any bashful looks,' he said, disliking this. 'Everybody has to go through this, and everybody is still a virgin when I'm finished. Just pull the shorts down. That's enough. Stop right there at your knees. I don't want to see anymore of you than I have to. Hold yourself up down there. I want to see if there's anything hidden. Not two hands. One. Just your fingertips.'

  Keeping a distance, Teasle stooped and peered at the kid's groin from several angles. The testes were bunched up close under. Now came the worst part of all. He would have told somebody like Galt to do it, but be did not like passing on dirty jobs. 'Turn around and bend over.'

  The kid really looked at him. 'Get your jollies off somebody else. I won't put up with anymore of this.'

  'Yes you will. Aside from what you might have hid up it, I'm not interested in your rear end whatsoever. Just do what you're told. Now reach back and spread your cheeks. Come on, it's not a sight I enjoy. There. You know, when I worked in Louisville, I once had a prisoner with a three-inch knife in a leather case shoved up himself. It always beat me how he could sit down.'

  Upstairs Galt was unlocking the door and opening it.

  'O.K., you're clean.' Teasle said to the kid. 'You can pull up your shorts.'

  Teasle listened for Galt to close and lock the upstairs door, and then Galt came scraping his shoes down the cement steps. He was carrying a pair of faded denim coveralls, a thin mattress, a rubberized sheet, a gray blanket. He looked at the kid standing there in his shorts, and he said to Teasle, 'Ward just called in about that stolen car. He found it in the stone quarry north of here.'

  'Tell him to stay put and tell Shingleton to call the state police for a fingerprint crew.'

  'Shingleton already called them.'

  Galt went into the cell, and the kid started to follow, his bare feet making a slapping noise in the water on the floor.

  'Not yet,' Teasle told him.

  'Well make up your mind. First you want me in there. Now you don't want me in there. I wish you knew what you wanted.'

  'What I want is for you to go down to that shower at the end. And I want you to take off your shorts and wash yourself good before you put on the clean uniform. Be sure to wash that hair of yours. I want it clean before I have to touch it.'

  'What do you mean touch it?'

  'I have to cut it.'

  'What are you talking about? You're not cutting my hair. You're not going anywhere near my head with any scissors.'

  'I told you everybody has to go through this. Everybody from car thieves to drunks gets searched like you, and takes a shower,
and gets any long hair cut. The mattress we're giving you is clean and we want it back clean without any ticks or fleas from where you've been sleeping in sheds and fields and God knows where.'

  'You're not cutting it.'

  'With a little encouragement I could arrange for you to spend another thirty-five days here. You wanted in damn bad enough. Now you're going through with the rest of it. Why don't you just give in and make things easy for the two of us? Galt, why don't you go up and get the scissors, shaving cream, and razor?'

  'I'll only agree to the shower,' the kid said.

  'That'll be fine for now. One thing at a time.'

  As the kid walked slowly down to the shower stall, Teasle looked again at the lash marks on his back. It was almost six o'clock. The state police would be reporting soon.

  Thinking about the time, he counted back to three o'clock in California, unsure now whether to call. If she had changed her mind, she would already have been in touch with him. So if he did phone, he would only be putting pressure on and driving her farther away.

  All the same he had to try. Maybe later when he was done with the kid, he would call and just talk without mentioning the divorce.

  Who are you fooling? The first thing you'll ask her is whether she's changed her mind.

  Inside the stall the kid turned on the spray.

  10

  The hole was ten feet deep, barely wide enough for him to sit with his legs outstretched. In the evenings they sometimes came with flashlights to peer down at him through the bamboo grate. Shortly after each dawn they removed the grate and hoisted him up to do their chores. It was the same jungle camp they had tortured him in, the same thatched huts and rich green mountains. For a reason he did not at first understand, they had treated his wounds while he was unconscious: the slashes in his chest where the officer had repeatedly punctured him with a slender knife and drawn the blade across, grating against his ribs; the lacerations in his back where the officer had crept up behind, suddenly lashing. Lashing. His leg was badly infected, but when they had opened fire on his unit and captured him, no bone had been hit, only thigh muscle, and eventually he was able to limp around.

  Now they did not question him anymore, did not threaten him, did not even talk to him. They always made gestures to show him his work: dumping slops, digging latrines, building cook-fires. He guessed their silence toward him was punishment for pretending not to understand their language. Still, at night in his hole, he heard their conversations dimly and from the scraps of words he was satisfied that even while unconscious he had not told them what they wanted to know. After the ambush and his capture, the rest of his unit must have gone on to its objective, because now he heard about the exploded factories and how this camp was one of many in the mountains watching for other American guerrillas.

  Soon they had him doing more chores, heavier ones, feeding him less, making him work longer, sleep less. He came to understand. Too much time had gone by for him to know where his team would be. Since he could not give them information, they had fixed his wounds so they could play with him some more and find out how much work he could take before it killed him. Well, he would show them a long wait for that. There was not much they could do to him that his instructors had not already put him through. Special Forces school and the five mile runs they made him run before breakfast, the ten miles of running after breakfast, heaving up the meal as he ran but careful not to break ranks because the penalty was ten extra miles for anyone who broke ranks to be sick. Climbing high towers, shouting his roster number to the jumpmaster, leaping, legs together, feet braced, elbows tucked in, yelling 'One thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand' as he dropped, stomach rising to his throat, spring-harness jerking him up just before the ground. Thirty pushups for every lapse in the routine, plus a pushup shouted 'For the Airborne!' Another thirty pushups if the shout was weak plus another one 'For the Airborne!' In the mess hall, on the toilet, everywhere, the officers waited, abruptly yelling 'Hit it,' and he would have to snap down in a jumping pose, shouting 'One thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand,' snapping to attention till dismissed, then shouting 'Clear, sir,' running off shouting 'Airborne! Airborne! Airborne!' Day-jumps into forests. Night-jumps into swamps to live there for a week, his only equipment a knife. Classes in weapons, explosives, surveillance, interrogation, hand-to-hand combat. A field of cattle, he and the other students holding knives. Bowels and stomachs strewn across the field, animals still alive and screeching. Hollowed carcasses and the order to crawl in, to wrap the carcass around him, to wash himself in blood.

  That was the point of becoming a Green Beret. He could take anything. But each day in the jungle camp he grew weaker, and at last he was afraid that his body could not keep on. More work, more heavy work, less food, less sleep. What he saw went gray and blurred; he stumbled, moaning, talking to himself. After three days without food, they tossed a snake flopping into his hole to squirm in the dirt, and they watched as he twisted off its head and ate the body raw. He only managed to keep a little of it down. Not until later - a few minutes, a few days, the time was all the same - did he wonder if the snake was poisonous or not. That and the bugs he found in his hole and the chunks of garbage they occasionally threw down at him, that was all that gave him life the next few days - or weeks, he could not tell. Hauling a dead tree through the jungle back to camp, he was permitted to pick fruit and eat it, and by nightfall he had dysentery. He lay in a stupor in his hole, mired in his excrement, hearing them talk about his foolishness.

  But he had not been foolish. In his delirium his mind seemed better than it had been since capture, and the dysentery was intentional. He had eaten just enough to catch it mildly so the next day when they hauled him up be could pretend his cramps were more severe than they were actually, so he could collapse while dragging the dead trees back to camp. Maybe they would not make him work for a while then. Maybe his guard would leave him in the jungle and go for help to carry him to camp, and by the time the guard returned, he would have been able to escape.

  But then he realized that his mind was not better at all. He had eaten too much fruit, and the cramps were worse than he expected, and once he could no longer work, the guard would likely shoot him, and even if he did escape, how long could he last, how far could he get, starved and half-dead and diarrheic? He could not remember if he realized all this before or after. Everything became confused, and suddenly he was on his own, crashing through the jungle, collapsing into a stream. The next thing he knew, he was crawling through ferns up a slope, standing at the top, falling onto level grass, standing again and straining to get across the level, then crawling up another slope, at the top no longer able to stand, only to crawl. The mountain tribes, he was thinking. Get to a tribe, was all he could think.

  Somebody was making him drink. The soldiers had caught him he was sure, and he fought to break away, but somebody was holding him down and making him swallow. It wasn't soldiers, it couldn't be: they let him break away, stumbling through the jungle. Sometimes he thought he was back in his hole, only dreaming he was loose. Other times he thought he was still dropping from the plane with the rest of his team, his chute not opening,

  [?missing page 48]

  rifle slide pulled back, making him roll into the brush before he recognized that the snap was only from a branch that he himself had snapped.

  In two weeks the rain started, coming down forever. Mud. Wood rot. Showers streaming down so thick that he could hardly breathe. He kept on, dazed by the pelt of the rain, infuriated by the suck of the mud, by the wet bushes clinging to him. He could not tell which way was south anymore - the night clouds would break and he would take a bearing from a star, but then the clouds would close up and he'd have to travel blind, and when the clouds once more opened, he'd discover he had lost direction. One morning he found he had wandered in a circle, and after that he travelled only in the day. He had to go slower, more carefully, to keep from being spotted. When clouds obscured the
sun, he aimed toward far-off landmarks, a mountain peak or a towering tree. And each day, every day, the rains came.

  He fell out of the forest staggering across a field, and somebody shot at him. He stumbled to the ground, crawling back to the trees. Another shot. People running through the grass. 'I told you to identify yourself,' a man was saying. 'If it weren't I saw you didn't have a weapon, I'd have killed you. Stand the hell up and identify yourself.'

  Americans. He started laughing. He could not stop laughing. They held him in the hospital for a month before his hysteria left him. His drop into the north had been at the start of December, and it was now the start of May they told him. How long he had been a prisoner he didn't know. How long he had been on the run he didn't know. But between then and now he had covered the distance between his drop area and this American base in the south, three hundred and ninety miles. And what had started him laughing was that he must have been in American territory for days, some of the soldiers he had heard in the night and hid from must have been Americans.