Help, I Am Being Held Prisoner

21

AT ELEVEN-THIRTY, one hour exactly after Phil and Jerry were supposed to have been here, Eddie roused himself from his parade rest stance in front of the gatefacing window and said, “Very well. We’ll have to improvise.”

Improvise. The bus was gone. There was no way off the base but the main gate, and our identification just wasn’t going to be good enough to get us through that main gate with this damn carton full of death and injury. In thirty minutes the relief sentry would arrive to take the place of the one we had tied up, and the alarm would then be sounded for fair, and this entire camp would be searched with a fine-tooth comb. And not just with a fine-tooth comb, either; there would also be floodlights mounted on jeeps, and men armed with rifles and machine guns, and tracker dogs, and maybe even helicopters. We were going to be caught, my insane friend and I, absolutely no later than one hour from right now. And when we were caught, we would really be caught. Our very presence on this base was an even more serious offense than our absence from the penitentiary. Then there were the uniforms that we weren’t authorized to wear, and the fake ID, and the grand larceny of all this shit in the carton, and the assault on the sentry . . .

A persistent image kept entering my brain. One summer vacation when I was a teenager my parents and I took a cottage by a lake in Maine. It rained all week, of course, but that isn’t the point. The point is, there was a fireplace, and we kept a fire going in it for a little warmth and dryness, and one time after my father tossed a flat piece of old board on the fire I noticed there was an ant on it. The piece of board was about four inches wide, making a kind of highway through the flames, and the ant just kept running back and forth on that highway, trying to find some way the hell out of there. Improvise. We were now, like that ant, going to improvise.

I said, hopelessly, “I suppose the only thing to do is try the main gate. Maybe, if we go through without the carton, just maybe they won’t look too closely at-”

“We will not abort,” Eddie told me sternly. “Put that out of your mind once and for all, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. When it doesn’t matter what you do, you might as well do what comes easiest, and right now the easiest thing to do was to go along with Eddie’s delusions. His delusion that he was a Captain, for instance, and that I was a Lieutenant. Not to mention his delusion that there was some way off this board and out of the fire.

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.

The rough turf and the wooden sign stopped us more than my frantic pounding on the brake, and the coup de grace was the ditch beside the main road, which ate our front wheels and left us angled steeply downward with our headlights glaring at the weedy opposite slope a scant three inches away.

I appeared to be wearing the steering wheel on my chest. Removing it, I looked around and discovered I was still inhabiting the planet Earth. So it was likely I was still alive.

“Nicely done, Harry,” Eddie said.

I gaped at him. He had tossed his officer’s cap away into the ditch and was giving me his flinty smile. He was also in the process of disentangling himself from the jeep. “Time to move out,” he said.

Move out. Could I move at all? I hunched up and back, pushing against the windshield frame and the back of the seat until I could catch my heels on the seat itself. Sitting briefly atop the seatback, woozy and dazed, I looked around some more and saw the black Buick roaring backwards toward the intersection from the side road. Eddie was out of the jeep by now and climbing out of the ditch, leaving clothing in his wake. Uniform blouse off, tie now sailing away behind him. And also words: “Bring the carton, Harry!”

He was calling me Harry. Was the craziness over? The Buick, braking sharply to a stop just shy of the intersection, suddenly disgorged Phil, who popped out on the passenger side and yelled, “Come on! Come on!”

I went on. I finished separating myself from the jeep’s loving embrace, then picked up the carton and went staggering off across the uneven ground toward the Buick. Eddie was already there, sliding into the back seat.

I followed, pushing the carton ahead of me. Phil climbed back in, we slammed all the doors, and Jerry, at the wheel, backed up in a smart half-circle out onto the main road, shifted, and we tore off toward town.

There was civilian clothing for both of us in the back seat and we both hurriedly began to change. Phil, half-turned so he could talk to us, said, “How’d you get out?” “Eddie blew up the gate,” I said. “It was terrific. I thought we were doomed, I thought we were goddam doomed, and he just blew up the gate and commandeered a jeep and son of a bitch!” Relief was making me giddy; it was only with the greatest effort that I managed to stop talking.

Phil said, bitterly, “We had a surprise shakedown, the whole fucking prison. Thank God we had Muttgood in the gym, he helped us cover for you two. I gave him the idea you were off screwing each other on some roof.” “Fast thinking,” Eddie said. My own comment I left unvoiced.

“But we couldn’t get away for fucking hours ” Phil said. “I really thought you people had bought the farm.”

“So did I,” I said. “Eddie, you’re a genius.”

“The first principle of military endeavor,” he said. “Always keep the mission in mind. If you know what you want to do, you’ll know how to do it.”

“Anything you say,” I told him, and put on my civilian pants.

Phil said, “How’d you blow up the gate?”

“With a hand grenade,” Eddie told him. “I took several, thinking they might be useful.”

“Hand grenades?” Phil seemed startled, almost frightened. “In this car here?”

“They’re perfectly safe,” Eddie said, and patted the carton.

“The hell they are,” Phil said. “We don’t want them. Throw them the fuck out.”

Eddie cocked his head to one side. “Are you sure, Phil?” “The laser’s all we need,” Phil told him. “We start cocking around with hand grenades, all we’ll do is blow our own asses off. Throw them out.”

Eddie shrugged. “You’re the team leader,” he said, opened the carton, and took one of the grenades out. He rolled the side window down, pulled the pin, and tossed the grenade out into the weeds beside the road.

“Not like that!” Phil yelled, and when Jerry slammed on the brakes Phil screamed at him, “Don’t stop, for Christ’s sake!” So Jerry accelerated again, and a piece of black night behind us went boom.

Jerry ducked his head down into his heavy shoulders. “What the hell was that?”

“Just drive,” Phil told him, and said to Eddie, “Throw them out nice. Don’t blow things up.”

Eddie had the other grenades in his hands, holding them casually, like a juggler just before doing his act. “I didn’t want a child to find one and hurt himself,” he said.

Jerry said, over his shoulder, “There’s a bridge up ahead. Throw them in the river.”

“Fine,” Phil said. “But don’t pull any pins.”

“Right,” Eddie said.

We rode along then in silence. Eddie kept playing with the grenades, tossing them from hand to hand. We couldn’t get to that river too soon for me.