Help, I Am Being Held Prisoner

19

THE BUILDING WE WANTED was just beyond the cylinders full of plague germs. “There it is,” Eddie said. “The structure on the right.”

“Uh huh,” I said, and stopped scratching to look. Ever since he’d told me about the plague germs, I’d been itching all over. Also my lungs felt wrinkled.

The structure on the right was a one-story version of the basic building, with fewer windows than normal. A rifle-bearing sentry marched back and forth in front of the entry door. That is, he marched back and forth the instant he saw the two of us, a Captain and a Lieutenant, approaching his post; before then he’d been more mooching than marching. And now, as we neared him, he came smartly to a halt, did a right face toward us, snappily converted from right shoulder arms to port arms, and announced in a very young voice, “Who goes there?”

“Captain Robinson,” Eddie told him. “At ease, soldier.” The sentry’s body slackened a bit, but the rifle remained more or less at port arms while Eddie fished out the documents Bob Dombey had forged for him. I spent the time studying the sentry; did they really let a boy like this have bullets for that gun?

“Here you are, soldier.”

The boy wouldn’t take the papers. He stuck his head forward over his clutched rifle and read them as Eddie held them up in front of him. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Very good, sir. You want to enter?”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t have a key,” he said doubtfully.

“I have,” Eddie assured him. A week ago Eddie had returned from the base with various wax impressions, and Phil had arranged to have keys made for him in the prison machine shop. Now, Eddie took out a ring of keys, selected one, and used it with casual confidence to open the door. “Return to your post, soldier,” he said, not harshly, and the two of us entered the building, pausing only for Eddie to hit the light switch beside the door, turning on a double row of fluorescent lights extending all the way down to the other end of the building.

There were no interior partitions. It was almost exactly like my old basic training barracks, a long rectangular room with square wooden pillars at intervals to support the roof. The only difference was that my barracks had been lined with windows all the way around, while this structure only sported a pair of windows flanking the main entrance and three more windows spaced along each side. No windows, so far as I could see, were in the rear wall.

There was no furniture in the building, just cartons stacked up so as to make aisles. Most of the stacks were no more than waist-high, but here and there one loomed as high as my head. Reading the stencilled notations on various cartons I learned that I was standing among machine guns, mortar shells, night sights, hand grenades . . .

“Ah,” Eddie said. “Here they are. Find an empty carton, Lieutenant, there ought to be one around here somewhere.”

That was the second time he’d done that. The first, back in the Officer’s Club dining room, I’d put down to excess caution. But who could overhear us this time? Looking toward the front windows I saw the sentry marching smartly back and forth out there, with the door closed between us and him; surely there was no way he could hear anything being said in here.

Or was Eddie afraid these storage buildings were bugged? It was possible, after all; put the sound-activated microphones in, have a central listening location, and know at once if anybody was planning anything he shouldn’t.

Smart, Eddie, I thought, and aloud I said, “Yes, sir,” and went off looking for empty cartons.

There was a bunch of them at the very rear, all neatly stacked inside one another. They were a hell of a job to separate, and when I finally went back to where Eddie had ripped open some of the full cartons, I found he had assembled several things other than the laser. There were four Colt .45 automatics, shining wickedly black in the fluorescent lighting, plus a dozen extra clips full of bullets. There were five hand grenades. And finally there was a box about fifteen inches long and six inches square, stencilled in black with all that indecipherable lettering and numbering the military likes so much, but with one word showing absolutely plain: LASER.

I said, “What’s all the rest of this?’’

“Useful materiel,’’ he said. “Is that the empty carton? Fine.’’

He took the carton from me and carefully packed it, wedging all the items in together so that nothing would bounce around loose. Considering what the items were, it was a precaution worth taking.

“All right, Lieutenant,” he said, when he was finished. “If you’ll carry that, we can be off now.”

“Right, sir,” I said. I picked up the carton, which weighed a ton, and followed him back down the central aisle to the front door. He opened it, stepped to one side to let me precede him out, and the sentry took one look at the carton in my arms, halted, switched his rifle to port arms, and said, “I’m sorry, sir, I won’t be able to let you take that.”

Eddie had been on the verge of switching off the interior lights and shutting the door. Now he paused, glancing in quick annoyance at the sentry, and said, “What was that, soldier?”

“I can’t let you take any supplies from this building, sir, without a special requisition order from Major Macauley.”

“But I have one,” Eddie said. “I showed it to you.”

The sentry and I both looked at him in bewilderment. He had one? That was news to me.

And to the sentry, who said, “I don’t remember seeing it, sir, I’m sorry.”

“No problem,” Eddie said. “I prefer to see alert young men, on the job-” While saying which, he was reaching inside his uniform blouse, to suddenly pull out the small pistol he’d pointed at me that very first day in the gym.

“Just take it easy, soldier,” he said. “No reason to get yourself shot. Lieutenant-” that was me “-relieve the young man of his rifle.”

“Aa-uh,” I said. I was standing holding a carton of explosives in my arms, between one man with a rifle and one man with a pistol. But the sentry hadn’t moved, was still at port arms as though frozen in that position, so maybe there wouldn’t be any gunfire after all. Hastily putting down the carton I approached the sentry, noticing just how white were the whites of his eyes, and how equally white were the knuckles of his hands gripping the rifle; it was a bit heartening to know he was every bit as scared as me. Maybe more so, since he had no idea what was going on.

“I’ll take that,” I said, and put my hand on the rifle. It trembled like a puppy beneath my hand. The sentry was staring, wide-eyed. I was blinking like a shipboard semaphore.

“You can’t-” he started to say, and then stopped, swallowed, and started all over again. Whispering this time, he said, “I can’t let go.”

“Yes, you can,” I assured him, and tugged slightly on the rifle. His knuckles really were white.

Behind me, Eddie said, “Step to one side, Lieutenant. If he won’t give up his weapon voluntarily, I’ll have to fire.”

The sentry’s hands snapped open, and I just barely kept the rifle from falling to the ground. But I did keep hold of it, got it into two hands, and backed away with it.

“All right, soldier,” Eddie said. “Into the building, on the double.”

We’re right in the glare of floodlights, I thought. We’re in the middle of an Army base, in the glare of floodlights, disarming a sentry. How did I get involved in this?

I realized I was holding the rifle at port arms. I wanted to shift to some other position, but I couldn't think of one, so I stayed the way I was.

Meantime, the sentry was scooting into the building. Eddie and I followed him, and I immediately put the rifle on top of a stack of cartons, well out of the way.

Eddie said to the sentry, “Let me see your orders of the day.”

“Yes, sir.” The sentry too, I noticed, couldn't get past the idea of treating Eddie like a superior officer. He reached into his breast pocket, took out a folded piece of rough paper, and handed it across.

“Good.” Opening it, Eddie said, “What's your name, soldier?”

“Bunfelder, sir. Private First Class Emil Bunfelder.”

“At ease, Bunfelder.''

Bunfelder’s hands went behind his back, his feet moved to a position twelve inches apart. By God if he wasn’t standing at parade rest!

Military men receive their assignments in orders of the day, typewriter-paper-size sheets with perhaps a dozen different names and assignments, all in military abbreviations. This was what Eddie was reading, and when he found what he wanted he looked up and said, “You’ll be relieved at twenty-four hundred hours.”

“Yes, sir,” said the sentry.

Eddie checked his watch. “Two hours forty-seven minutes from now. It won’t be a difficult wait, Bunfelder.”

Doubtfully, not sure what was meant, Bunfelder said, “No, sir.”

Now Eddie issued both of us orders, calmly but briskly, and we followed them with dispatch. The sentry sat down on the floor with his back against a support post. He removed his belt, and I used it to tie his wrists behind the post. I then used his necktie to gag him and his shoelaces to tie his ankles together. When I was finished, Bunfelder wasn’t going anywhere before his relief arrived at twenty-four hundred hours.

“Good work, Lieutenant,” Eddie said. “Now it’s time for us to go.”

“Right,” I said.

Outside again, Eddie carefully locked the door while I picked up the carton. Then we set off down the street.

As we walked along, certain inconsistencies in Eddie's manner began to bother me, and finally I said, “Eddie, do you think that building we were in might have been bugged?”

He frowned at me. “What say?”

“Do you think there was a microphone in it, anybody listening to us?”

“Of course not,” he snapped. “Don’t be paranoid.”

“Oh,” I said. The carton was getting heavy; I shifted it to a new position.

“Come along, Lieutenant,” Eddie said. “We don’t want to be late for the rendezvous.”

“Right,” I said.

“Eh?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.