Help, I Am Being Held Prisoner

20

IT TOOK NEARLY AN HOUR to walk to the west gate, and in that time I saw more methods of destruction than most sane people see all their lives. After the quonset hut full of chemicals and the second ring of supply buildings full of miscellaneous material came endless tall rows of stacked shells, parking lots lined with stripped- down jeeps and medieval-looking armored cars and big- tired trucks of various sizes, low concrete block structures full of ammunition and explosives, row upon row of self- propelled artillery, and a veritable invasion force of massed tanks, all with some sort of white cap over their out-thrust turret guns, as though they were being treated for a venereal disease.

Sentries marched back and forth at their posts, and though we passed very close to some of them, not a one asked us who we were or where we were going or what we had in the carton. Every once in a while a jeep with two or three white-helmeted MPs in it would drive slowly by, but they too accepted our uniforms at face value and went on without questioning us or wondering why we were roaming around out here after dark with an anonymous carton. Given my present circumstances I was happy for their attitude, but given the tools of mayhem available all over the place, I found myself wishing some of these people were a little more suspicious, a little more alert.

Eddie spent most of the walk pointing to this or that engine of death and telling me its nomenclature and particular qualities, plus whatever anecdotes it had put him in mind of. He also called me ‘lieutenant’ from time to time. Dante had it good; he only went through Hell.

We were supposed to rendezvous at the west gate with Phil and Jerry at ten-thirty. We arrived ten minutes early and sat down in the unused guard shack to rest while we waited. The carton had become very heavy after a while, so I did a lot of flexing of my arm muscles, trying to get rid of the aches I’d developed. Looking back the way we had come, at the tanks and guns and armored cars and all the rest of the armament hulking there beneath the floodlights, it began to look to me like a true battle scene, frozen in time, with white flares glaring overhead and all the panoply of destruction poised beneath, ready to kill anything that moved.

This gate and its blacktop road were not in normal use by any of the Camp Quattatunk personnel. The main gate, where Eddie and I had come in, was the only one generally open. This one here, and several other supplementary entrances around the perimeter of the huge compound, was used exclusively for movement of stored materiel in and out of the base. Those tanks over there, for instance; if one of Eddie’s friends decided to use them to level Cleveland, they would exit through here rather than plunge through all the other weaponry to get to the main gate. Otherwise this entrance was kept locked. And, as the signs facing outward warned us, it was also kept electrified.

At precisely ten-thirty Eddie stepped outside the guard shack and peered into the darkness on the other side of the gate, looking in vain for Jerry and Phil. “They’re late,” he announced.

“They’ll be here,” I said, trying not to sound as fatalistic as I felt.

“That’s not like Phil,” Eddie said, and snapped his cuff back to look at his watch. The radium dial glinted in the darkness. Then he came back into the guard shack, a small square clapboard structure with windows on all four sides and room enough within for a chest-high desk, a couple of stools and a wooden bench. I was perched on the stool, gazing alternately at the petrified battle scene and the darkness beyond the fence, but Eddie preferred to stand, taut and serious, gazing steadfastly out the window toward our non-present gang. Once again he reminded me of a ship’s captain, this time on the bridge, gazing out at the expected sou’wester.

By twenty of eleven, I was beginning to hope that maybe something really had gone wrong with the others. Maybe somebody had been caught leaving the prison, or there was trouble about the stolen car. Maybe something really serious and time-consuming had taken place and we wouldn’t be able to steal the goddam laser after all. And if we couldn’t steal the laser we wouldn’t be able to pull the bank robbery.

That was something to look forward to.

On the other hand, if Phil and Jerry didn’t show up, we could be in big trouble. There was no way for us to get through that electrified gate, since Phil was the expert in that department, who would be bringing the bypass wires and the rubber gloves and all the other things needed to de-electrify the gate without alerting the MPs back at their headquarters. Which meant the main gate was our only exit, and the last bus left the base for town at eleven o’clock. That was twenty minutes from now, and my calculations had us a good hour’s walking time from the bus stop. Could we stroll out the main gate on foot at midnight and hope the MPs there wouldn’t do more than glance at our ID cards? I somehow doubted it.

I said, “What time is it?”

Radium dial glistened greenly in the dark. Eddie said, “Twenty-two forty-five hours.”

I translated that, and it came out quarter to eleven. I said, “Eddie, I don’t think they’re coming.”

“Of course they are,” he said.

“We’ve only got fifteen minutes to catch that bus.” There was enough illumination from the distant floodlights so I could see him scowl at me. “What bus?”

“The last bus back to town. Eddie, we can’t just walk out that main gate in the middle of the night without-” “Paragraph one,” Eddie said. “Our transportation will be coming, I have every confidence in Jerry and Phil. Paragraph two: we could not take the bus even if we were close enough to reach it, which we aren’t, because we would not be able to board it with that carton of materiel.” “We’ll have to leave it,” I said.

“Abort the mission? You can’t be serious.”

“Eddie, we don’t have any choice.”

“Lieutenant,” he said, and his voice was icy, strong, controlled, “we will have no more defeatist talk.”

“Eddie, I-”

“Captain, if you please!”

“Uuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” I said, and turned to look out the window toward the gate. Beyond it I saw no headlights approaching. Parking lights; they wouldn’t use headlights. Well, I didn’t see any of them approaching either.

“Did you hear me, Lieutenant?”

There are three rules one should live by, if one intends to make it successfully through life: Don’t carry a sofa upstairs by yourself. Don’t get involved with a Scorpio unless you mean it. And don’t argue with crazy people. “Yes, sir,” I said.