W E B Griffin - Corp 07 - Behind the Lines

by Behind The Lines(Lit)

  "They no speak English like me," the Filipino said. "I translate for you."

  There was an exchange between the Filipino men.

  "He say he want to see money."

  "I'll give him the money when that boat is in the water and we're under way," Weston said.

  "You no trust me?" the Filipino asked, in a hurt tone.

  "When the boat is in the water and we've pushed off," Weston said.

  "No go now," the Filipino said, as if explaining something to a backward child. "Must go in dark. Fucking Japons see us if we go now, and maybe fuck-ing U.S. Navy."

  Weston wondered if that meant the Navy was patrolling these waters to prevent Americans from leaving the peninsula. From deserting in the face of the enemy. He looked at his watch. It was 1735. Darkness should fall soon.

  "OK," Weston said. "We'll wait."

  "OK," the Filipino said. "Get off beach where nobody can see you."

  As darkness fell, there was a heavy rain shower, and Weston and Everly found what shelter they could under the hull of the boat. It didn't offer much shelter, though, and they could not help but notice the battered condition of the hull.

  It was quite dark when other men appeared. `Their' Filipino motioned them out from under the hull, and when they moved onto the beach, they al-most immediately stepped into water. The beach had narrowed; the tide had risen.

  The men, using ropes woven from vines, dragged the boat across the beach and got it into the water.

  "You give me money now," 'their' Filipino said when the boat was bob-bing, barely visible, several yards offshore.

  When Weston produced the money, the Filipino counted it in the light of a Zippo lighter. The lighter had a USMC insignia. For a moment Weston thought, lightly, that might be a good omen. Then he wondered where the Fili-pino found the lighter. Lighters were in short supply. There were no more Ship's Stores or Army Post Exchanges, nor stores outside military bases. Good cigarette lighters were in demand; people took care of them.

  Where did this guy get the lighter? Steal it from somebody? Offer some other Marine a way off Bataan, then rob him, knowing he couldn't go to the Military Police? Or throw him over the side?

  That's paranoid, he told himself. There's no reason to be suspicious of the Filipino.

  If he'd wanted to rob us, he could have done it in the cantina, or while we were here in the bush, waiting for it to get dark And we couldn't have done a thing about it. There is a boat, and absolutely no indication that the Filipino is going to do anything but what he agreed to do, get us off Bataan. What's wrong with you, Jim Weston, is that you 're afraid. You 're afraid of what you 're doing, deserting in the face of the enemy; and you 're afraid of getting killed. For Christ's sake, you're supposed to be an officer. Act like one!

  They waded out to the boat, finding themselves in water almost to their armpits, holding their weapons over their heads. When they reached the side of the boat, one of the Filipinos leaned over and took Weston's Springfield from him. Then he reached down for the web belt, with its holstered pistol.

  If I hand over the pistol, I'll be disarmed. Maybe they've been waiting for this-to separate us from our weapons.

  Oh, for Christ's sake! Stop it! If they wanted to slit our throats, they would have done that on the beach.

  He let the Filipino on the boat take the web belt. And then a hand found his in the darkness, and he felt himself being hauled out of the water.

  The first thing that happened was his pistol belt and the Springfield were returned to him, which made him feel like a fool.

  Everly came aboard a moment later. One of the Filipino seamen took Wes-ton's arm, led them to a small hatch in the deck, and motioned them through it. A match flared, and in its light Weston saw the Filipino lighting a primitive oil lamp, nothing more than what looked like a six-inch piece of clothesline stuck into a bottle of oil. But the flame caught, and the small compartment was dully illuminated. The Filipino handed him the lamp and then left the compartment, closing the hatch after him.

  Weston looked at Everly.

  "Well, we seem to be on our way," Weston said. Everly did not reply.

  Weston saw Everly make sort of a pillow out of his rucksack and then lie down on the deck. Weston had no rucksack, and tried to make himself comfort-able without one. But the confinement of the compartment and the curve of the hull made this impossible; his head hung down painfully. Finally, he took off his shirt and rolled it up. This seemed to work.

  He heard creaking sounds from outside; and then he had a sense of motion, as if the boat were getting under way.

  "Have you got a match, or a lighter?" Everly asked. It was the first time he had spoken.

  "Both," Weston replied.

  "Why don't you put that lamp out?" Everly said, his suggestion again sounding more like an order. "If we need it, we can relight it. If that lamp spills, lit, there's likely to be a fire."

  "Right," Weston said, and blew the flame out. There was an unpleasant-smelling smoke, and the coal on the wick took a long time to die out.

  Then the darkness was complete. There was no question now that they were moving. The hull was canted-which forced Weston to readjust his po-sition on the deck-and he could hear the splash and gurgle of water on the hull.

  He started to think. The idea that they were going to be robbed and killed no longer seemed credible. He was almost embarrassed that he had had it. But what was real was that he had now deserted. That was a fact. He had deserted in the face of the enemy, in the foul-smelling bilge of a crude Philippine fishing boat. It was not what he had had in mind when he joined The Corps and went through flight school.

  He fell asleep trying to put things in order, telling himself he was going to have to stop dwelling on the desertion business. It wasn't as if he was running away to avoid his military duty; what he really was doing was evading capture, so that he could make his way to Australia and get back in the cockpit of a fighter to wage war against the enemy as he had been trained to fight.

  Weston woke in shock and confusion. That immediately turned into terror.

  He tried to sit up-a reflex action-and became instantly aware that some-thing-someone-was lying on him. And then whoever was lying on him was thrashing about and making horrible guttural sounds. And then-again without conscious effort-when he tried to push whoever was on top of him off, or to slip out from under him, he realized his hands were slippery.

  "Mr. Weston, you all right?" Everly hissed. Before Weston could form a reply, he sensed movement; and then the weight on him lifted.

  "What the hell?"

  "You all right?" Everly asked again. "Did he cut you?"

  "Oh, Christ!" Weston said. "What the hell happened?"

  "I cut his throat," Everly said almost matter-of-factly. "Are you all right?"

  The sonofabitch is annoyed that I didn't answer him quickly enough.

  "I'm wet, my hands are wet," Weston said.

  And then he realized what made his hands wet and sticky, and was quickly nauseous. Not much came out, but his chest hurt from the effort, and there was a foul taste of bile in his mouth.

  "What the hell happened?" he asked, now indignant himself.

  "Here it is," Everly said. "I found it."

  "Found what?"

  "The knife, a filet knife, it looks like," Everly said. Weston felt something pushing at him. "You take it."

  "I don't want it!"

  "There's three more of them outside," Weston said. "In thirty seconds, they're going to suspect this guy fucked up."

  "He tried to kill me?" Weston asked, his brain not quite willing to accept that fact.

  "Just be glad he went after you first," Everly said. "If I'd have had to fight the sonofabitch, no telling what would have happened."

  "Jesus Christ!"

  "Load your pistol," Everly ordered.

  "There's shit-there's blood-all over my hands."

  "Wipe them, for Christ's sake, on your pants. Get your pistol loaded. Qui-etly!"
<
br />   Weston slapped his hands against his trousers to wipe off the blood, then somehow managed to get the.45 pistol from its holster. The first time he tried to pull the slide back to chamber a cartridge, his fingers slipped when it was halfway back, and the spring forced the slide forward again without chamber-ing a cartridge.

  "Quietly, for Christ's sake!" Everly said. And then, as a flashlight played in the compartment, blinding Weston with its sudden light, he added, "Shit!" A moment later there were half a dozen deafening explosions, each accompa-nied by an orange flash.

  Now everything seemed to move in slow motion.

  Weston frantically wiped his fingers on his trousers and felt for the serra-tions on the rear of the pistol slide. He jerked it back violently. His fingers slipped off, but when the slide moved forward again, he heard-and felt-a cartridge being chambered.

  He now recognized the noise. It was the Thompson firing, and it was in-credibly loud, painfully deafening. His ears rang, and he felt dizzy. Though he was nearly blinded by the light from the flashlight, he vaguely saw Everly div-ing for it. Then he covered it with his body, and the light went out.

  An orange ball in Weston's eyes faded slowly. After what seemed like a full minute but was probably far less time, he could make out a slightly lighter area in the blackness. This was the hatch to the compartment, he realized- now open. A moment later, he saw the reason the hatch was open: There was a body in it.

  He could now make out Everly, not clearly, but clearly enough to see that he was grasping the hair on the head of the body in the hatch. He pulled the head back and cut the man's throat.

  "They don't have any weapons," Everly said. "Guns. If they did, they would have used them by now. But how the fuck do we get out of here?"

  "They'll be waiting for us," Weston said, and immediately felt like a fool.

  Everly moved close to the hatch, then rolled onto his back.

  "As soon as I'm through the hatch, you follow," Everly ordered. "Come up here!"

  Weston moved toward the hatch. When he put his hand to the deck, it slid in what had to be blood. The bile returned to his mouth, but he was able to restrain the impulse to vomit.

  He had just reached Everly when Everly fired the Thompson at the side and overhead bulkheads, ten or twelve rounds in two- and three-round bursts. The noise and muzzle flashes were again blinding, deafening, and painful.

  When partial sight returned, Weston could see Everly shoving himself through the hatch, still on his back. Additional flashes came from the Thomp-son. But, with the muzzle outside the compartment, no more painful explosions assaulted his ear.

  Weston dove through the hatch the moment Everly had cleared it, then rolled onto his back.

  "Shoot the sonofabitch!" Everly ordered.

  Weston looked frantically from side to side, and finally saw one of the Filipinos, scurrying aft on all fours.

  "Shoot the sonofabitch!" Everly screamed.

  Weston held the Colt in both hands, lined up the sights as best he could, and fired. The Filipino seemed to hesitate. Weston shot him again. And again.

  "Make sure he's dead," Everly called, somewhat more calmly.

  Weston rose to his feet and walked unsteadily aft. The Filipino-he was "their Filipino," the one who'd arranged for the boat, taken the money-was on his stomach, his legs pushing as if trying to get away. Weston did not want to shoot him again. But then, as if with a mind of its own, the hand holding the.45 raised the pistol until it was pointing at the base of the man's skull, and his finger pulled the trigger.

  The man's head seemed to explode.

  He looked back at Everly in time to see him-far more clearly this time- repeat what he'd done in the compartment. Pulling the man's head backward by his hair to expose his throat, he used a thin-bladed knife to cut deeply into it. Blood gushed out.

  Everly dropped the man's head onto the deck. As Weston watched, horri-fied, Everly ran his hands over the man's body, searching it. He put his hands in the man's pockets and came out with a pocket watch, a key, and some money, all of which he jammed into his own pocket. Finally, he stood up.

  "You want to give me a hand here, Mr. Weston?"

  "What?"

  "Get this sonofabitch over the side. Him and the others."

  "You're going to throw him overboard?"

  "You want to keep them, Mr. Weston?" Everly asked.

  Weston went forward and helped Everly throw the body over the rail. It entered without much of a splash. And when he gave in to the impulse to look over the side, it was nowhere in sight.

  Everly was by then already aft, searching the body of "their" Filipino. From it, he took a canvas wallet and a gold locket of some sort the man had been wearing around his neck. He went into the wallet and took from it the five hundred dollars Weston had given the man on the beach. He put the money in his pocket; and then, horrifying Weston, he pulled the man's trousers off.

  Everly met his eyes. "We're going to need clothes," he said, adding, "Help me get the bastard over the side."

  Weston moved to help him. The body fell backward into the water, and Weston had a quick sight of the man's face, the features obscenely distorted by the.45 bullet. It would remain with him for a long time.

  By the time they'd dragged the last two bodies from the compartment, searched them, stripped them, and pushed them over the side, Weston was ex-hausted, sweating, and breathing heavily. He sat down on the deck, his back against the mast, feeling sick and fighting the urge to throw up.

  A few minutes later, Everly came back and sat down beside him.

  "No food and no charts," Everly said. "Those bastards had no intention of doing anything but going back where we came from, with our money, and without us."

  "Shit," Weston said.

  After a while, he became aware that his hands were sticky. He knew why. He pushed himself away from the mast and made his way aft, knelt on the deck, and put his hands in the water. There was no sensation of movement other than a side-to-side rocking motion.

  He washed his hands and arms as well as he could, and tried not to think what his chest must look like. Then he pulled himself back in the boat and brushed up against something hard, which moved. After a moment, he realized it was the tiller. There was no life to it, which confirmed his belief that they were sitting dead in the water.

  If that's the case, the bodies we put over the side are likely to be floating around right next to us. We have to get out of here.

  Where the hell are we?

  The flashlight came on, and Everly directed it at the mast. The sail was down, which explained why they were dead in the water.

  The light went out. After a moment, there was a creaking sound, and Wes-ton sensed, rather than saw, that Everly was raising the sail. Confirmation of this came a moment later, when he heard the sound of the sail filling. A mo-ment later, he felt a faint suggestion of movement.

  He put his hand to the tiller, put it amidship, and felt life come into it.

  Everly came aft.

  The flashlight came on, and he saw Everly studying a compass.

  "We're pointing north," Everly said. "We want to go southeast. You know anything about sailing a boat, Mr. Weston?"

  "Only what I learned at camp when I was a kid."

  "Can you turn us around, point us southeast?"

  "Where are we going?"

  "Mindanao," Everly said. "It's five hundred miles or so to the south-east."

  "We don't have any food or any water," Weston said.

  "There's a bunch of little islands between here and Mindanao. We'll just have to try to get food and water."

  "I'll bring us about," Weston said. "Watch the boom. And I think you better give me that compass."

  Everly handed him the compass. Weston started pushing on the tiller.

  The boat began to turn.

  "At least we got our money back," Everly said. "That's something."

  And our lives. We 're alive, Weston thought, but said nothing. "Plus what looked li
ke another three, four hundred," Everly added. "I don't think we were the first people these fuckers took for a boat ride."

  [THREE]

  When the sun came up, they were out of sight of land, alone on a gently rolling sea.

  Everly's Marine Corps-issue compass showed them on a southeasterly course. Weston wondered if that were actually the case, or whether steel or iron somewhere on the boat was attracting the compass needle. On the other hand, they were not headed in the wrong direction. If the sun rises in the east, and you are headed directly for it, then south is ninety degrees to the right.