A Fortnight of Fury

by David Culberson

  A huge Hercules transport plane touched down on the cleared runway, and two others landed in the time it took Desmond to zigzag another hundred yards. A Hercules transport plane that had landed earlier was already offloading Jeeps, trucks, motorcycles and hundreds of boxes that were being moved by a dozen olive-colored forklifts.

  Arlan looked back down to survey the scene they’d just driven through. It was busy. He then looked farther to the west and saw tents being erected near the edge of the runway. Coils of concertina wire had been hastily stretched out in a large rectangular shape. In it were a hundred Cuban and Grenadian prisoners. Dozens more prisoners were being led from the east in groups of two or three by armed soldiers. All were handcuffed with plastic ties, and belts or clothing had been used to wrap the prisoners’ upper torsos just below their shoulders.

  A hundred yards farther down the runway Desmond parked the van near the temporary command post for the 75th Ranger Regiment, where the group was welcomed by the commanding officer, who introduced himself as Lieutenant Colonel Hegel. Charlie introduced himself and the others.

  “Sorry I can’t roll out the red carpet, but we’re kind of busy,” Lieutenant Colonel Hegel said, with a smile. “Sounds like you’ve been busy as well. John called me last night and told me to expect your radio call. He also told me a little of what you’ve done for us in the last day or so. We appreciate it.”

  “Too bad you had to jump in the daylight,” Charlie said.

  “Yeah. Well, as John probably told you, this operation has more ego at the top than brains. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more medals passed out after this is over than the number of participants.”

  A bullet hit the top of the tent post behind them a full second before the sound of the sniper fire could be heard. Arlan ducked. Nobody else did.

  Captain Jay leaned toward Arlan, smiled and said, “Too late. Once you’ve heard it the bullet’s long gone, or in your brain. You’d have been dead and wouldn’t have known it.”

  Arlan looked at Captain Jay and said, “Thanks for that info. I’ll keep that in mind next time I go with you on one of your adventures where there are snipers.”

  “Did John secure Pearls?” Charlie asked the lieutenant colonel.

  “Took him about two hours. No casualties. Wish I could say the same here.”

  Arlan glanced down the runway toward the concertina wire and the prisoners. Two very tall prisoners were being led to the temporary prison by two much shorter soldiers. Both prisoners were handcuffed and secured around their torsos. One was a wide black man with dreadlocks. The other, only an inch or so taller but much thinner, was a white man with red hair and a large nose.

  Arlan squinted and asked, “Isn’t that Long Bill?”

  Everybody turned and looked to where Arlan pointed and smiled, except the lieutenant colonel, who looked confused.

  Charlie said, “We know that man. He’s one of the guys we’ve been chasing for a couple of weeks.”

  The lieutenant colonel nodded and asked, “Is he American?”

  Charlie nodded.

  “Then he could be in deep shit. Firing on US troops is treason.”

  “Do you mind if we talk to him?”

  “No. But you better get all of the information you can from him now because he’ll be going away for a long time,” the lieutenant colonel said and shouted for the men leading the prisoner to hold up.

  Long Bill had a look of surprise when he saw the men from St. John approach. He then smiled and asked, “What are you guys doing here?”

  “Are you really asking that?” Tommy said, then stepped close to Long Bill and punched him.

  Skandar took a step back. Long Bill went down holding his nose. Blood ran between his fingers. One of the soldiers escorting the two tall prisoners stepped forward with his weapon ready, but the lieutenant colonel shouted for him to stand down.

  For the next few minutes Long Bill told everything he knew up until he was captured. He had no idea where Boiled Bob and Lisa were, only that they’d been in one of the warehouses at the east end of the runway in the construction camp before it was destroyed.

  The lieutenant colonel, who’d stepped closer to the group, said, “We’ve pretty much cleared that area. The bodies we’ve found are Cuban, so far. No females. We’ve not been able to move the debris for any bodies underneath yet. But we’ll be getting to that next, if you want to wait around.”

  Another sniper shot resounded through the command post, causing a few to duck, including Arlan. Captain Jay snorted and said to Arlan, “Too late again, Rookie.”

  “Why don’t you get yourselves some grub while we sort this out,” the lieutenant colonel said. “We’ve got rations and coffee in the back of my tent.”

  Charlie looked at the others, who all shrugged. What else could they do? Charlie told Desmond to drive back to the dock to check and see if Bob and Lisa had somehow stumbled back to the boat. They then spread out on boxes under the tent and drank bad coffee and ate mush from tins.

  An hour later, after a few more sniper rounds and multiple landings and take-offs of large transport planes, the airfield started to look like a circus that had come to town. People milled everywhere. More prisoners were rounded up and placed inside the concertina wire. Bombing was heard in the distance, and smoke rose from over the mountain to the north. Arlan thought once again of a Hollywood set. If it wasn’t for the acrid smell of the smoke that hung in the air, mixed with jet fuel from the busy airstrip and sweat that permeated the air close by, he would have thought he was having a dream.

  The lieutenant colonel rejoined the group and said, “We haven’t cleared all of the debris from the warehouses yet. It’s slow going because we have to check for explosives as we go. We’ve got the students from the True Blue Campus. They’ll be flown back to the US on our transports.”

  “Any resistance?” Charlie asked.

  “Minimal. Strange thing is that there were only a couple of hundred students. We were told there were six hundred American students at the medical school.”

  Charlie looked surprised and said, “There are. But there are a couple of campuses on the island.”

  “What?” the lieutenant colonel said and immediately called for his radio.

  “There’s another campus just south of St. George’s at Anse Bay,” Charlie said. “We found out yesterday. I have pictures of it on this camera.” He pulled the miniature camera from his shirt pocket.

  The lieutenant colonel alerted his commander on the USS Guam about the second campus, and all hell broke loose. The lieutenant colonel, his radio up to his ear, straightened his back as if coming to attention. Arlan heard more “Yes, sirs” and “No, sirs” during the next five minutes than he’d heard in the past five years.

  “If you don’t mind, I’ll take your camera and get it out to the Guam by chopper. We’ll have the photos in a couple of hours.”

  Charlie handed him the camera and said, “There’s a lot more on there besides the other campus. Some of it should be useful as you move inland.”

  The next thirty minutes were spent listening to the lieutenant colonel make and field radio calls to the command ship and to some Special Forces that had already infiltrated the St. George’s area. He then walked to an adjacent tent.

  “The 82nd Airborne has arrived,” Charlie said, pointing down the airstrip at a second command post being set up nearby.

  “I-its getting crowded a-around here,” Tommy said with a smile.

  Arlan could tell the others were getting antsy. Sitting and waiting was not something they did well.

  Captain Jay stood, puffed out his chest and said, “Fuck this. This isn’t a war. It’s a brawl. David and Goliath bullshit. Let’s find fuckin’ Boiled Bob.” He looked for support. He received frowns. “And Lisa,” he added.

  The lieutenant colonel returned to tell them that no other bodie
s had been recovered from the construction camp. “The people you’re looking for are not among the dead, and we’ve not seen anybody alive or wounded that meets their descriptions.”

  He waited a moment and said, “I have a crazy lead for you, though.” He sighed and said, “It seems we bombed a mental hospital by mistake in St. George’s.”

  “Bad shit happens in war. What’s that have to do with us?” Charlie asked.

  “Well, you know that photo you gave to John and he passed along to some of us? The photo of the man you’re looking for?”

  They all shrugged as if to say So?

  “It seems that he’s in St. George’s.”

  “No way,” Captain Jay said.

  “We’re a little busy up there. Your man is not one of our priorities. Hell, he wouldn’t even be on the radar if not for John. The people we have up there are Special Forces. They don’t make mistakes. They’re sure it’s him.”

  The lieutenant colonel paused and said, “It turns out we’re going that way. You want to come along?”

  The mood instantly brightened, and everybody stood and followed the lieutenant colonel.

  The lieutenant colonel turned and smiled at the men following him. He said, “You’ll see things that aren’t in the tourist brochures.”

  Charlie and Tommy smiled. Captain Jay licked his lips like a lion ready to pounce. Arlan tried to think of an excuse not to be flown by chopper into a war zone.

  Lieutenant Colonel Hegel paused long enough to tell an assistant to make room for four more passengers and then said, “Let’s go. I’ll fill you in on the way.”

  Charlie tried to radio Desmond but couldn’t get a response. He looked at the radio and frowned.

  When Lieutenant Colonel Hegel saw Charlie’s frustration, he said, “We started to have radio communication problems earlier this morning. Hell, some of the new troops aren’t even using the right frequency. That’s an organizational problem. But something’s going on in the atmosphere because my radio works only about half the time. I’m surprised you were able to reach me. Are you trying to reach the man who brought you here?”

  “Yes. I need to tell him we’re heading north.”

  “I’ll leave word here with my assistant to look out for him if he returns. He’ll fill the man in.”

  They walked across the airstrip, which was bordering on chaos. Helicopters were landing and taking off like insects. The noise was deafening. Arlan saw a line of people his age, most dressed in shorts and flip-flops, being loaded onto a transport plane. The lieutenant colonel pointed out that they were the American medical students from the True Blue Campus being airlifted to the US.

  The lieutenant colonel led them to a helicopter that could easily seat ten people. The pilot and co-pilot saluted from their seats in the cockpit, and a crew member handed the lieutenant colonel and his guests headphones as they sat on hard benches in the cabin. The headphones were all attached to a small box screwed to the roof of the cabin, creating a mess of spring-coiled communication lines that hung from the ceiling to each man’s head. The lieutenant colonel nodded to the pilot once everybody was seated, and the helicopter’s rotors began spinning. Arlan was glad to have the headphones. As the rotation of the rotors increased, so did the noise.

  Arlan looked down to the commotion on the runway as the chopper ascended. The scene wasn’t what he’d pictured in his mind as a war zone. He’d only known what the movies had depicted—organized troops either lined up or marching in cadence with solidarity of uniforms and equipment and a somber mood that enveloped the immediate area. What he saw was troops in multiple styles of uniform mixed with locals dressed in bright colors and sandals, who, out of curiosity, had managed to skirt the US military roadblocks and come to the airport as spectators. Prisoners wore a mix of construction vests and camouflage shirts, and feral dogs darted from tent to tent in search of food scraps.

  When the helicopter reached a higher altitude and the runway below him was temporarily out of his sight, Arlan looked to the south and saw a beach with medium-sized blue waves rhythmically collapsing on the white sand. He then looked north to the lush, steep mountains. Leaves of jungle trees reflected the bright sunshine. Only the black and grey smoke from exploded ordnance marred the tropical scene.

  Chapter 16

  Day 12: Oct. 25 (Afternoon)

  Boiled Bob cautiously stepped from the bush at the base of the hill and onto the graveled parking lot next to the dock where he’d left the Pappy Bobo. A van and a small boxy car were parked in the lot. An old wooden trawler was tied to the dock opposite the Pappy Bobo. He waited ten minutes and saw no activity. With a shrug, he walked onto the dock as casually as he could. At first, he was worried that his torn T-shirt and cuts on his arms and legs from the thorny bush would stand out. He then realized that he was in a war zone. Who’d notice? His caution gave way to confidence.

  He approached the Pappy Bobo and was greeted with, “Well, if it isn’t Major Asshole, Boiled Bob.”

  Lisa raised herself from the companionway with a broad smile and said, “You look like shit. But then, that’s what you are.”

  Boiled Bob nervously glanced around the dock. Lisa looked fresh and wore clean clothes. Why was she smiling? He looked to see if she held a weapon and saw nothing.

  He said, “You seem pretty happy, bitch. What I don’t understand is why you came back here to my boat.”

  “It’s my father’s boat,” Lisa said and smiled.

  Boiled Bob looked from bow to stern and said, “What if I don’t want you on the boat anymore?”

  “It’s my father’s boat, asshole. And I don’t want you on my father’s boat anymore.”

  “A lot you can do about it,” Boiled Bob said and started to step over the rail and onto Pappy Bobo’s deck.

  He turned when he heard the rush of footfalls from the trawler a few feet away. “What the f…?” Boiled Bob grunted as two large West Indian men tackled him to the dock, taking his wind away.

  “Looks like you’ve been caught, asshole,” Lisa said with a laugh. “Guess who’s come to see you?”

  Boiled Bob was lifted to his feet with a large arm that locked around his neck.

  Lisa said, “No answer? Want to guess?”

  Boiled Bob wanted to answer Lisa but couldn’t. His windpipe was choked off.

  “I’ll give you a hint. Your worst nightmare,” Lisa said. “Have you guessed yet?”

  Boiled Bob was about to pass out when he heard a shout from behind him, telling the men who held him to stand down. The man who held him loosened his grip but not before placing him face-first on the hard dock.

  Bob turned his head to the side and shouted, “I was going to let her go. We had an agreement. Ask her.”

  The two men tied his thumbs behind his back with a plastic tie and lifted him to his feet.

  A third man stepped onto the dock from the trawler and smiled at Boiled Bob.

  Lisa smiled and said, “Meet my new best friend, Desmond. He’s Charlie Kline’s right-hand man here on Grenada. That’s Charlie’s boat behind you. Do you want to know who his crew is?” Lisa asked and smiled.

  Boiled Bob grunted and struggled with the men who held him. One of them slapped the side of his head, knocking Bob off balance.

  Lisa said, “Come on Bob, ask who the crew is.”

  One of the men slapped Boiled Bob, who finally asked, “Who… bitch?” which brought him another slap.

  “Let’s see… There’s Arlan O’Brien…”

  “So.”

  “Oh, and there’s Tommy Lowell.”

  Bob didn’t respond.

  “And, somebody who you know really well…”

  Bob snarled.

  “Come on, Bob, you don’t want to guess?”

  Bob turned his head, not wanting to give Lisa the pleasure of seeing his anguish.

  �
��Captain Jay has come, in person, to thank you for the wonderful way you’ve treated me as your guest on this excursion.”

  Boiled Bob looked out into the bay and to the sea to the south, the direction he’d hoped to have been sailing by now. Explosions and small arms fire filled the air to his right and behind him. The bright-blue sky, crowded with white cumulus clouds, was polluted with whiffs of black and grey smoke drifting with the trade winds. The sight and the sounds, his handcuffed thumbs and the woman he’d kidnapped comfortably laughing at him were too much.

  “I was going to let her go. We’d agreed. She can go now,” Boiled Bob cried.

  The men dragged him back into the trawler and tied him to a rail in the cabin.

  Boiled Bob collapsed onto the hard deck wondering how this could have happened. He took a deep breath and felt that he might black out. He went slack against his restraints. He wasn’t sure if he’d blacked out or not. He had no perception of time and wasn’t sure how long it had been before he’d heard Desmond talking to Lisa. He’d told her that his radio wasn’t working, and he hadn’t been able to contact Charlie to let him know she was safely onboard and that Boiled Bob was captured and secured. Desmond had told Lisa that he’d drive back to the US command post at Point Salines to find Charlie. Bob then heard fading footsteps on the dock and a car start and drive away. One of his three captors was gone. He felt a surge of adrenaline. He might get out of this yet.

  * * *

  As the helicopter rose and soared away from the command post at Point Salines, a loud click followed by static crackled through the headphones, separating Arlan from his thoughts on the bizarre scene below them.

  Charlie’s voice crackled through the headset. Arlan looked over at him and saw that he’d twisted a small arm on the side of his headset to a position in front of his mouth. Arlan had no idea the headsets were two-way radios. He felt for the arm on the side of his headset and pulled it down close to his mouth, just in case he had anything to say. He couldn’t imagine what that would be.