“I might get married. If she’ll say yes.”
“Ahh — you haven’t queried your intended victim. Or you have and she refused in a rare fit of eminent good sense. Which is it?”
“Haven’t asked.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Met her last year in Hong Kong.”
“I met a girl in Hong Kong once upon a time,” Flap replied. “Her name was…damn! It was right on the tip of my tongue. Anyway, she worked at the Susy Wong whorehouse, a couple of blocks from the China Fleet Club. You know it? She was maybe sixteen and had long black hair that hung almost to her waist and exquisite little breasts that—”
“I met an American girl.”
“Umph.”
“I knew you’d be interested, seeing how we fly together and all, so I’ll tell you. Since you aren’t sleepy and we got nothing else to do.” And he did. He told about meeting Callie, what she looked like, sounded like, how he felt when he was with her. He told Flap about her parents and about Chicago, about getting out of the Navy and what she said. He had been talking for at least half an hour when he finally realized that Le Beau was asleep.
His side throbbed badly. He changed positions in the detritus of the jungle floor, trying to find one that would cause the least stress on his wound. The sharpness of the pain drove his mind back to the pirate ship, to the prospect of death in a few moments by execution.
Flap threw that knife into that one guy and sliced the other’s throat in what — three seconds? Jake had never seen a man move so fast, nor had he ever seen a man butchered with a knife. Shot, yes. But not slashed to death with one swipe of the arm, his throat ripped from ear to ear, blood spurting as horror seared the victim’s face.
Life is so fragile, so tenuous.
Luckily he had gotten into motion before the surprise wore off the other two.
And the engine room, the horror as that man came around the engine shooting and the bullet struck him. Now the scene ran through his mind over and over, every emotion pungent and powerful, again and again and again.
Finally he let it go.
He felt like he had that sticker of Flap’s stuck in his side right now.
So those other guys died and he and Flap lived. For a few more hours.
It was crazy. Those men, he and Flap — they were like fish in the sea, eating other fish to sustain life before they too were eaten in their turn. Kill, kill, kill.
Man’s plight is a terribly bad joke.
He was dozing when the sound of a motorboat going upriver brought him fully awake. Flap woke up too. They lay listening until the noise dissipated completely.
“Wonder what happened to the pirate ship?”
“Maybe it sank.”
“Maybe.”
After the sun came up the foliage was so thick that Jake had to keep his hand on Flap’s shoulder so that he wouldn’t lose him. Flap moved slowly, confidently and almost without noise. Without him Jake would have been hopelessly lost in five minutes.
Flap caught a snake an hour or so after dawn and they skinned it and ate it raw. They drank water trapped in fallen leaves if there weren’t too many insects in it. Once they came to a tiny stream and both men lay on their stomachs and drank their fill.
Other than the noises they made, the jungle was silent. If anyone was looking for them, they were being remarkably quiet.
Jake and Flap heard the noises of small engines and voices for a half hour before they reached the village, which as luck would have it, turned out to be on their side of the river. It was about noon as near as they could tell when they hit the village about a hundred yards inland. Thatched huts and kids, a few rusty jeep-type vehicles. They could smell food cooking. The aroma make Jake’s stomach growl. A dog barked somewhere.
They stayed well back and worked their way slowly down to the riverbank to see what boats there might be.
There were several. Two or three boats with outboard engines and one elderly cabin cruiser lay moored to a short pier just a couple of dozen yards from where Jake and Flap crouched in the jungle. Beyond the boats was a much larger pier that jutted almost to midstream. Resting against the T-shaped end of it was the hijacked ship. Above the ship numerous ropes made a latticework from bank to bank. Leafy branches of trees dangled from the ropes — camouflage. The freighter seemed to be held in place against the current mainly by taut hawsers from the bow and stern that stretched across the dark water to the river’s edge, where they were wrapped numerous times around large trees.
From where they lay they could just see the ship’s name and home port: Che Guevara, Habana.
Flap began to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Jake whispered.
“A Cuban freighter. We got shot down and almost killed over a Commie freighter. If that doesn’t take the cake!”
“My heart bleeds for Fidel.”
“Ain’t it a shame.”
The ship’s cranes were in motion and at least a dozen men were visible. A large crate was lowered to the pier and six or eight men with axes began chopping it open. Apparently they didn’t have a forklift.
Inside the box were other, smaller boxes. Pairs of men hoisted these and carried them off the pier toward the village.
“Weapons,” Flap said. “They hijacked a ship full of weapons.”
“What do you think was in those little boxes just now?”
“Machine guns, I think. Look, aren’t those ammo boxes?”
“Could be.”
“They are. I’ve seen boxes like that before. One time up on the Cambodian border.”
“Maybe this ship wasn’t hijacked. Maybe those guys met it in midocean to put aboard a pilot.”
“Then why the SOS?”
Jake shrugged, or tried to. The pain in his side was down to a dull throb, as long as he held his shoulder still and didn’t take any deep breaths.
“These dudes are ripping off a Commie weapons shipment,” Flap said slowly. “Maybe one bound for Haiphong. Guns and ammo are worth their weight in gold.”
“That little cabin cruiser is our ticket out of here, if it isn’t a trap.”
“Maybe,” Flap said softly. “We can’t do anything until tonight anyhow, so let’s make ourselves comfortable and see what we can see. I don’t see any floodlights anywhere; these people won’t be working at night. But that little boat is just too good to be true. The captain we met yesterday didn’t impress me as the type of careless soul who would leave a boat where we could swipe it at our convenience.”
After a few minutes Jake muttered, “I haven’t seen the captain yet on the dock.”
“He’s around someplace. You can bet your ass on that.”
“That ship we set fire to isn’t here either.”
“Maybe they abandoned it. But remember that boat that went down the river last night, then came back hours later? It was probably that cruiser there, and it probably rescued everyone left alive. The captain is here. I can feel him.”
“Okay.”
“See that shack just up there on the left? From there a fellow would have a good view of the boat and the dock. Keep your eyes on that. I’m going to slip around and see what they’re doing with all these weapons they’re taking off that ship.”
“Leave me one of your knives.”
“Which one?”
“The sticker.”
Flap drew it from the sheath hanging down his back and handed it to Jake butt-first. Then he took two steps and disappeared into the jungle.
A throwing knife with a needle-sharp point and a slick handle, the weapon was perhaps ten inches long. Jake slipped it into his boot top, leaving just enough of the hilt exposed so that he could get it out quickly. He hadn’t the foggiest idea how to throw it, but he had no qualms about jabbing it into somebody to defend himself. His throbbing side was a constant reminder that these people wanted him dead.