“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 in 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.”
“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 kill 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 him 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 kill 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?”
“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.”
15
The days at sea quickly became routine. The only variables 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 tomorrows 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, which meant that when two A-6s 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 Jakes’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…”