He said, “Where’s the carton?”
“Right here,” I said, and patted it where I had placed it on the chest-high desk in the guard shack. “Do you think maybe we could toss the laser over the fence and then come back tomorrow and-”
But he wasn’t listening to me. He was opening the carton, and then he was fishing around inside it. “Fine,” he said, and took something out. “Carry the carton outside, Lieutenant,” he told me.
“What are we doing?” I felt very mistrustful all of a sudden. What had he taken out of there?
“We are altering our plan of withdrawal,” he said, and marched out of the guard shack. “Come along. Bring the carton.”
I went along. I brought the carton.
Outside, he pointed to the side of the shack facing the battle tableau. “Put the carton down there, against the base of the building. Sit down next to it, with your back against the wall.”
“Eddie, what are you going to do?”
“Move, Lieutenant. We don’t have much time.”
“I really want to know, Eddie,” I said.
In a very soft voice, he said, “That’s twice you have failed to address me in the proper manner. Is this a mutiny, Lieutenant?”
There was no way I was going to answer that question yes. Not when Eddie had his gun on him. “No,” I said. “No mutiny.”
“What was that?”
“No, sir” I said.
“Get on with it, Lieutenant,” he said.
Reminding myself that I had no future anyway, so that it hardly mattered what lunacy Eddie had in mind, I turned away from him, carried the carton around to the back of the guard shack, put it down, sat down next to it, leaned my back against the wall, and gazed at the tableau mordant in front of me with bitterness and despair.
Eddie came in sight around the corner of the shack, with something in his hands. “In position, Lieutenant? Good.”
I looked at him, and saw that it was a hand grenade he was holding just as he pulled the pin. “Jesus Christ!” I yelled, and jumped to my feet as he tossed the grenade underhand toward the gate. Then he stepped forward, casually stiff-armed me so that I lost my balance and went over onto the ground again, sat down next to me, and said, quietly, “Eight, nine-”
The explosion made the ground jump, as though surprised. Red-yellow glare beamed through the guard shack windows, which didn’t break; though in counterpoint to the whump of the grenade going off I did hear the tinkle of broken glass from the other side.
I was still trying to unscramble my brains when Eddie was already back on his feet, looking around the corner of the guard shack toward the gate. “Good,” he said, with satisfaction.
It was a way. It was crazy, but by God it was a true way through that gate. If we went through now, ran like hell, hid in the woods whenever we saw anybody coming, we just might make it. (We wouldn’t, but on the other hand we might.)
I climbed up the guard shack to my feet and ran around the corner to look at the gate. There was a smoking hole where it had been. Live wires fizzed and spuckled on both sides, creating short-lived tiny fires in dead leaves. Twisted remnants of gate hung from sprung hinges. “You did it, Eddie!” I cried, feeling a sudden surge of ridiculous optimism. Then I corrected myself: “Captain, you did it!” I turned to him, and found him rooting in the carton again. “I’ll carry that,” I said. “Let’s get out of here!”
Calmly he reached up, handing me one of the .45 automatics. Taking it-obedience was becoming second nature to me by now-I said, “Captain, we don’t have much time. They’ll be here any minute.”
“Don’t fire that at anybody,” he said briskly. “It isn’t loaded.” Then he got to his feet, holding a .45 of his own, and faced back toward the camp. “Here they come,” he said, still calm, still quiet, still brisk.
I looked. Here they came, all right, a jeep bouncing hell for leather through the aisles of tanks, with another one maybe fifty yards behind it. They weaved and darted and ran through the tanks as though they were under bombardment and taking evasive action. In the middle of the petrified battle scene, one element had come into furious life.
I screamed, “Eddie! Captain! We've gotta get OUT of here!"
“Follow my lead,” he said quietly, and stood next to the guard shack, facing the oncoming jeeps, the automatic held down at his side.
Follow his lead? Stand off two jeeploads of MPs with an empty gun? I stood there twitching, my mouth moving without words, trying to phrase the sentences that would get through to him that what we were doing was not sensible. “It’s not sensible!” I wailed, and the first jeep slued to a stop at our feet.
Three MPs, white-helmeted, white-eyed. The driver yelled at us, “Captain, what’s going on here?”
Eddie took a step closer to him. The other jeep was skidding up, brakes squealing. The smell of burnt rubber mixed with the acrid stink of the explosion. Eddie said, “Radicals. Weathermen, I think. Lieutenant Smith and I chased them this far. They dropped that carton when they blew the gate.”
Two MPs had clattered out of the other jeep and come running over to hear the story. One of them yelled, “Captain Robinson! What happened?”
So. Not for nothing had Eddie spent a week at this base. Not only had he familiarized himself with Camp Quattatunk, he had also familiarized Camp Quattatunk with Captain Robinson.
The driver of the first jeep was getting more wide-eyed by the second. He said, “You mean, they were inside?”
“They’ve done something to the sentry of building FJ- 832,” Eddie told him. “You got a radio in there, Corporal?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Call in. Have that building searched. If they’ve killed that man-” He shook the fist with the automatic in it, then turned to the MPs standing beside him. “I’ll have to requisition your jeep, Sergeant,” he said. “You and your man stand guard on this gate, in case they come back.” Turning again to the driver of the first jeep, he said, “Get back to building FJ-832. If they’ve left a bomb in there, this whole compound could go up.”
“Great Jesus!” the driver said. He threw the jeep in gear, stomped the accelerator, made one of the tightest U-turns in the history of vehicular travel, and roared off again into the sea of tanks.
“Lieutenant!”
“Yes, sir!”
“You’ll drive,” Eddie said, and vaulted into the passenger seat of the remaining jeep.
“Yes, sir!”
“Grab that carton of evidence!”
“Yes, sir!”
I grabbed the carton of evidence and threw it on the back seat, then pushed myself in behind the wheel like a woman pushing hair under a bathing cap. There was no room for my knees, but I put them in there anyway. The engine was running, the clutch was over there, the gear lever was floor-mounted. Left foot down, right hand forward, left hand clutching wheel, left foot up, right foot down hard. Tires screamed like stuck chorus girls behind me; the jeep lunged forward, leaped down into the grenade crater, cracked my spine in seven places when it landed, bounced forward, scrabbled up the rubble, made the blacktop, and off we roared down a hollow tube between lines of pine trees.
It was a mile to the turnoff. It couldn’t have taken long to get there because I held my breath the whole time. Then, when we arrived, I had the greatest difficulty forcing my foot to come away from the accelerator. It was a sharp left turn I would have to make, and I was coming at it way too fast.
So was the car coming the other way. All at once the intersection was full of a large black Buick, twisting into this road with its front wheels locked and its rear wheels skidding sideways, and there was absolutely nothing I could do but leave the road, jump the drainage ditch, and run head-on into the back of the sign that said dead end government property no trespassing.