23

TERUMBU ISLAND, LATE JULY

Under the veil of moonlight, two heads quietly bobbed to the surface of the coal-black sea just outside and aft of the false island. Havok and Stone remained motionless as they sucked in great amounts of air through open mouths as quietly as they could. After a few minutes, they glided under the camouflage netting to the starboard side of the Russian ship. While they hung off the rope ladder, recouping their strength, they listened for voices but heard none.

“Did you really have to drop me on my head?” Stone whispered.

“I just saved your life, and you still have room to complain?” Havok replied. “By the way, your head landed on a mattress.”

“Fine. Thanks for saving my life, but did you really have to drop me on my head?”

Havok didn’t reply. Instead, he stared at the rope ladder, thinking of a plan, and of their narrow escape.

Their survival had been close.

Their bound bodies had sped downward in the water, but Havok did not fight or struggle against his bindings, knowing it would be a waste of energy. Instead, he waited to hit the bottom. As he counted off the seconds, he could see nothing but the weak light escaping the open forward hatch of the submarine far below him. It seemed like hours, but Havok had subconsciously counted off ten seconds when his plunging race came to a sudden halt. The men’s bare feet struck the edge of the submarine’s deck, but the stop was brief. Their feet slid over the curved hull, the weights pulling them downward. A second later, their feet plunged into mud.

Havok could feel the muck around his ankles, which also covered the buckle of the weight belt. He could also feel the corroded steel of the sub’s hull against his back. By then, his lungs were climbing into his throat, trying to escape to the surface without him. At the same time, dozens of thoughts raced through his brain. Havok knew his brain would start shutting down from lack of oxygen, but something brushed against him. Was it Stone going through his death throes? He didn’t know, but it saved his life. As he was pushed sideways, his hands scraped across the jagged edge of torn metal. He ran his bindings up and down against the jagged metal, and he felt the steel slice into his flesh. He didn’t care, as they had been down for over a minute and were running out of air. Finally, the rope snapped and his hands flew apart. He bent over and thrust his hands into the mud, fishing with his slashed fingers until they felt the large metal buckle. He struggled feverishly to release it. By now, Havok was seeing racing bright lights. Death was near.

He didn’t know if it was him or the Virgin Mary, but something forced open the buckle, and he felt his feet pull themselves from the mud. He desperately needed to reach the surface and life, but he could not face leaving his friend behind. He knew Stone was off to his left, so he leaned over and reached out with his arm, waving it back and forth. He found Stone, who himself was thrashing furiously, struggling against his bindings and the lead weights. Havok didn’t waste time with the rope, but pushed his hands into the thick mire at Stone’s feet. He found the buckle, snapped it open, turned around, and stuck his arm between Stone’s arm and chest, in square-dance fashion. Havok used his free hand to pull both of them up, along the hull of the submarine. Once they were on the deck, he saw the light coming from the open hatch. Forcibly, Havok pushed Stone toward the hatch and threw him through it headfirst. Havok followed Stone, and seconds later, both of them were sucking in the air trapped in the pocket inside the submarine.

Neither man said anything for the longest time as they came to grips with their miraculous survival. They simply breathed in as much as they could, with their eyes closed. Their laborious breathing echoed against their eardrums in the tiny air pocket.

After a while, Havok asked, “You ready?”

***

Now, somewhat recovered, Havok said, “Time to spike a gun?”

“I hope I get to see Anisimova’s face when he realizes we ain’t dead,” Stone whispered back. “He tried to drown us, but all he did was throw us into the briar patch.”

“Now you can recall your literature?” Havok responded as he pulled on the rope ladder. “Come on.”

Havok slid over the bulwark with Stone right behind him, and when both of them were lying flat on the deck, they crawled forward, feeling their way cautiously. Stone passed Havok and was the first to reach the ladder that led to the upper deck, while Havok paused to collect a few pieces of round steel stock that lay scattered about the deck: leftovers from the welding table. He scooped them up and stood, ready to follow Stone up the ladder, when suddenly a brilliant white light blinded him. Havok froze where he stood and looked through the open watertight door directly into the ship’s interior. The massive body of one of the divers filled the frame only four feet in front of him.

Although the diver’s body faced Havok, his head was turned, looking back at his unseen shipmates. A fury of Russian curses pummeled the unthinking man, and just as quickly as the door opened, it was snapped shut, burying Havok again under a blanket of darkness. Havok realized how lucky he was, and he knew the longer they remained on board the more of their luck would evaporate. With his night vision ruined, he stuck his hands out in front of him, searching for the handrails of the ladder. He found them and followed them up to where Stone was waiting for him. Hunched over, Stone led Havok forward until they reached the single-barreled cannon. Without speaking, each man knew what to do.

Stone’s hands caressed the cannon barrel until he found what he was looking for. With both hands on the charging bolt, his tired arms slowly pulled it back, exposing the breech. “Go ahead, make their day,” he said through clenched teeth.

Havok removed the belted ammunition and inserted three pieces of the stock, one at a time, into the breech, pushing them as far as they would go into the tapered barrel, making sure they were snug. He placed the ammunition back into the breech as well. “All right, let it go.”

Stone eased the bolt forward, completing the gun-spiking operation, and within minutes, the men were in the water, swimming toward shore. Reaching the beach at the apex of the bay thirty minutes later, Havok and Stone dragged their bodies from the grip of the cold sea and collapsed onto the smooth sand, warming themselves with the dull rays of the weak moon.

“You know something?” Stone said as he recovered from the half-mile swim. “I would really hate to be the first guy that fires that thing up.”

“It’s not gonna be pretty,” Havok answered, staring at the moon, lost in thought.

“I sure could go for a hot beef steak right about now,” Stone said.

“If we’re lucky, all we’re gonna get tonight is a cold can of beans, and that’s going to have to wait.”

“Ain’t you the Galloping Gourmet.”

“I never claimed to be Graham Kerr.”

“Who’s that?”

“Forget it; let’s get moving.”

Grudgingly, the men stood and walked toward the main camp. Though they remained cautious, Havok gambled there would not be any patrols out that night. The Russians thought they were dead, the gold was safely stowed, and, as far as Havok and Stone knew, the Russians had recovered the sarin from the cavern. They arrived at the camp’s perimeter and skirted around it until they were behind the two-story building where Anisimova occupied the lower floor and where Xian had been torturing Pilar on the second floor. They could see dim lights leaking through the rain ponchos that covered the windows on both levels, as well as familiar voices coming from the first story.

“What do you mean you killed them?” Kang said. His anger was apparent.

“That is correct,” Anisimova said defensively.

“Then you’re a fool for doing so,” Yeshenko blasted. “At least until we recovered the sarin. All we found were my two missing men, and I lost a third just finding them. Kang, did you ask the professor if she knew where else it could be?”

“Yes, she clings to the same story,” Kang said. “She’s upstairs with my bodyguard. Somehow, I believe her. She says you are looking in the wrong spot or somebody else moved it.”

“No matter,” Yeshenko said, shaking his head. “We will begin our search again in the morning. It is too late to do anything now.”

He turned to leave the room, but Kang stopped him.

“Before you leave, can I offer you a piece of advice?”

“Yes, Kang,” Yeshenko said wearily. His voice revealed the strain of the last few days.

“In recent weeks, you have tried to kidnap Havok and his friend, to shoot him down, and to burn them alive. Now, your comrade here has drowned them. They seem quite tenacious, so I suggest your divers verify that the execution was carried out successfully.”

Yeshenko, committing his first mistake since being on the island, agreed. “That is sound advice, and I will have them do so by first light.” He nodded his head while looking at Anisimova with disdain and then at his watch. “It is late. I am going to bed. Just make sure your bodyguard leaves the professor in walking condition. I will collect her at sunrise.”

Havok and Stone heard the sounds of people leaving the building. They looked around the corner and saw Yeshenko walking toward the center of camp. They also saw Kang round the corner, where he climbed the rusting steel steps up to the second floor. After listening to a brief exchange in Chinese, they watched Kang and Chiba walk down the steps and toward the beach. After a minute, they also saw Anisimova leave the building and walk to the two-story building at the other end of camp.

Havok knew they had only minutes to work. They quickly covered the few yards to the steps leading up to the second floor and took them three at a time. At the top landing, they entered the room. They saw Pilar lying on her right side with her hands tied behind her back. She appeared to be sleeping. Havok knelt down and placed one hand on her shoulder and the other over her mouth, touching her gently. At first, she jerked away, but she looked up and recognized Havok’s face in the darkness. As he untied her and helped her to her feet, he heard booted footsteps landing heavily on the metal steps.

Stone searched for some sort of weapon while Havok shoved Pilar into a dark corner. Stone kept looking at the bottles on the table next to the door, and it looked to Havok as if Stone couldn’t make up his mind which bottle to grab.

“Pssst!” Havok hissed, holding his hands up in despair.

Stone looked at him and held his hands up as well. “What?” he mouthed.

Stone saw the don’t-fuck-with-me look in Havok’s wide eyes.

Exasperated, Stone dropped his hands and grabbed the bottle of chardonnay. He held it over his head and firmed his body up against the doorframe. They heard approaching footsteps, and then the man’s thick skull entered the room. The thought of what would happen to them if they did not put this behemoth down for good gave Stone’s weak arms renewed strength. The coiled springs of his arms snapped loose, thudding the bottle across the crown of the man’s skull, shattering the bottle.

The force of the blow brought a muted grunt from the victim. His body bowled forward as Stone jumped on his back and rode him to the ground. As they landed, Stone grabbed Chiba’s ears and viscously smashed his face into the concrete slab three times. Pilar listened to the sounds of bone and cartilage breaking. With Stone still on top of the dead man, he went through the pockets of his clothing, relieving Chiba of a 9 mm, two extra magazines, and a stiletto knife. Havok looked around for anything useful and came up only with a canteen of water, which he passed over to Pilar. He turned to help Stone drag Chiba’s body into a dark corner. Havok grabbed Pilar and led all three of them out of the room, down the stairs, and into the darkness of the jungle.

Halfway to the seaplane base, the escapees stopped for rest and water. They took turns emptying the two-quart canteen before speaking. “You know something?” Havok said, speaking to Pilar for the first time in days. “Rescuing you is becoming a full-time job.”

Pilar swallowed the last gulp of the water and then passed the empty canteen back to Havok. “I’m glad to see that I’m keeping you gainfully employed, but how are we getting off this island?”

Havok answered, “We’re going to start with getting ourselves an airplane.”

“We’re going to fly out?” Pilar asked, and a smile came to her face at the prospect of leaving this island of death and misery.

“After we take care of a few items first,” Havok said. After pausing for a moment, he had to ask, “Pilar, what’s going on with the sarin?”

“I’m not sure. I told the Russians just what you told me. They found the cavern and the grave with two dead Russians buried in it, but no sarin. Did somebody move it after you buried it?”

Havok thought for a moment before responding, “Well, I only killed the one Russian, so I think we owe Ben Gunn a nice piece of cheese.”

“There you go with Ben Gunn again,” Stone said. “What do you mean by that?”

“I’ll tell you later, but you’re right: it’s time to get ourselves an airplane.”

***

Four loud and drunken men sat around the folding army table. They all wore their flight coveralls, and two of them wore shoulder holsters that held semiautomatic pistols at their sides. On the table, three almost-empty vodka bottles, two rolls of toilet paper, a jar of pale green liquid, and a plate of pickles surrounded the battery-operated lantern in the center of the table. Two other men sat by a dying campfire, sharing a bottle, a magazine of some sort, and quiet conversation as one of them held it up to view the centerfold in its entirety.

“They seem to be celebrating,” Stone surmised.

“They are,” Pilar answered. “They’re leaving tomorrow morning and taking some excess gear and some of the soldiers back early.”

“Back to Mother Russia?”

“Indirectly. One of them is bragging about what he is going to do when he gets to Da Nang. It sounds like some sort of pit stop.”

“Well then, are we going to take that Popsicle stand or what?” Stone said impatiently.

“Just hold on to your saddle sores, Pete. I’m waiting for an opening.”

Two minutes later, the opening came.

One of the armed men stood, said something, and grabbed a roll of toilet paper.

Havok watched the man stumble toward them. “Pete, you and Pilar get as close as you can to the table, and keep your eyes on the guy taking a dump. When he comes back out, you two jump the other armed man at the table.” He looked at Pilar. “Know how to use a pistol?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Havok handed her the bodyguard’s pistol, and before he left he warned, “Don’t think twice about shooting any one of those guys if you have to. They’re so drunk they’re liable to do anything.”

The three of them remained squatting in the bushes, letting the Russian pass. Pilar and Stone then edged closer to the camp, while Havok looped around and approached the squatting figure from behind. The smell of the area told him to watch his step. The man jerked and wobbled as he squatted, creating a mess on his right foot and the leg of the flight suit. Havok sighted the holster and casually stepped up behind the man. He snatched the revolver from the holster and jammed it against the man’s neck; then he grabbed the man’s collar with the other hand and pulled the Russian to his feet.

The pilot did not know what was happening, but he knew enough to stand peacefully.

Havok pushed the barrel of the revolver harder against the man’s neck and held him at arm’s length. Although drunk, the man got the message and walked back toward the table. The pilot stumbled into the open, and the violence erupted so fast it seemed to be over before it had started.

As soon as Havok and his captive entered the clearing, Stone and Pilar leapt from the jungle, jumping at the table with the other men. Pilar jammed the barrel of her pistol against the other pilot’s cheek, while Stone yanked the sidearm out of its holster and pointed it at the other men at the table. The larger of the two men by the campfire threw down the magazine he was holding and jumped to his feet. Stone quickly aimed at him and pulled the trigger twice in quick succession. Two slugs tore into the man’s chest, knocking him back onto the bright red coals of the campfire. He was dead before landing. The sitting pilot took advantage of the distraction. He grabbed at the barrel, yanking the pistol free from Pilar’s hands. Havok saw the flurry of movement in the flickering shadows, and in a split second, he removed the pistol from his captive’s neck and leveled it at the rising figure between Stone and Pilar. He fired twice into the man’s face and then rammed the barrel back into the neck of his now slightly deaf captive.

Pilar jerked her head away as bone and gore slapped against the side of her face. The slaughter also splattered all over the table with a piece of toothed jaw knocking over the lamp. Abrupt silence reigned supreme throughout the camp; only the crackling of the fire could be heard as flames consumed the legs of the corpse.

“We did not mean to kill your chums,” Havok said, speaking in English. “They were stupid. If you behave, you all will live through this night, I promise.”

The Russians answered him with uncertain looks.

Havok pointed his pistol at the man next to the fire and flicked the barrel. The man grabbed his dead friend by one arm and dragged him from the fire. Havok returned the barrel to the neck of the man he was holding. “My friend and I are going to get something, and the professor will stand guard. If you make an attempt to escape or harm her, all of you will die, understand?”

The men looked at their dead comrades and then nodded their heads vigorously in agreement.

“Pete, find some rope.”

Stone disappeared into the shadows and soon returned with a coil of nylon rope. He grouped the Russians together by the campfire while Havok approached Pilar. She was wiping blood from her face with toilet paper. He bent over and pulled the pistol from the dead pilot’s grip and handed it back to her. “Hang on to it this time. Pete and I are going back to the Outfit for some possibles.” Through the dancing light of the campfire, he could see the fear and apprehension in her eyes. He grabbed her arms firmly. “Don’t worry, we’ll be right back. If any of them move, shoot them all.”

“What about the others? Maybe they heard the gunfire at the main camp.”

“I doubt it. It’s too far, and besides, it’s a chance we have to take.” Havok could see the worry in her face. “Tell you what, go hide over there in the jungle and watch the Russians from there. If anybody shows up, come to us, all right?”

Pilar nodded her head.

“Good.” He gave her a reassuring wink while flicking a piece of skull from her shoulder. “I’m going aboard the seaplane for a couple of minutes first.” He left her to watch the Russians, while Stone made sure they could not loosen their bindings.

Havok quickly ran through the cavernous interior of the aircraft. He found a light switch on the curved wall and turned on the dim overhead lights. He looked around the inside of the airplane, spotting the nose gun with two large aluminum boxes of ammunition in a small compartment under the seats of the cockpit, along with a toolbox and a sampling connection for the fuel systems. Satisfied, he left the plane and found Stone, who was dunking a pickle into the jar of pickle juice to wash off brain matter.

“How quick can you make a couple of bombs out of scuba tanks?”

“Quicker than a politician jumping in front of TV camera,” Stone said before chomping on the pickle.

***

After the run through the humid jungle, the salt water felt shockingly cold against Havok’s skin as he slid into the watery grave of his boat, and longtime friend. Stone stood guard at the edge of the cove. Through the darkness, Stone watched Havok’s shadow wade through the exposed wreckage, gathering needed materials.

With knowing hands, Havok searched through the remains of his once-proud boat, finding first a waterproof flashlight. He used it to help find other needed items: a coil of rope, four scuba tanks still in their racks, and four weight belts, each with several three-pound weights. He had everything they would need; the seaplane would provide the rest.

By two a.m. Havok and Stone had made it back to the seaplane with their load tied to their backs. They cautiously approached the camp. The fire was now a pile of glowing embers, and the dim light silhouetted four men as they sat up against each other, snoring loudly.

“Pilar,” Havok whispered loudly as he stepped to the table. There was no answer, so he eased the load off his back and pulled his pistol from his waistline. “Pilar?”

A figure burst from the jungle to his right. Poised and ready to fire, he waited until the dying fire exposed the running figure. Pilar’s smooth brown face came in from the light and plowed into Havok’s chest. “I’ve been so frightened. Please say you’ll never leave me again.”

“Promise,” he said honestly. “Have any visitors?”

She shook her head vigorously against Havok’s chest with her arms wrapped around his waist. When she had settled down, she noticed the scuba tanks. “What are these for?”

Stone, who had already dropped his load near the workbench, was eating another pickle. He answered Pilar, “Welcome to Bomb Making one oh one.”

“You’re going to help Stone while I learn how to fly a Russian seaplane.”

Havok checked the Russians to make sure their bindings were still secure. Then he entered the huge airplane, making his way to the cockpit. They needed to accomplish quite a bit within the short time they had until sunrise: Stone had to manufacture four bombs and then learn how to operate the 23 mm cannon, while Havok had to learn how to fly the Russian multi-engine seaplane. Although he had logged almost fifteen hundred hours of airtime, most of that was in single-engine aircraft. The sight of the numerous gauges was almost overwhelming. Havok shrugged his shoulders and repeated to himself, An airplane is an airplane is an airplane. He looked in the seat pockets for the usual check-off lists found in any airplane. Havok found the lists and started to review the images in the instructions.

Meanwhile, Stone and Pilar got themselves busy making bombs. The first thing Stone did was to lay one empty scuba tank on the workbench and place the first-stage valve in the vise bolted to the bench. Next, he opened the drawers under the work surface of the bench until he found a strap wrench. Placing the webbing around the base of the scuba tank, Stone pushed on the strap’s lever until the tank started to turn. Satisfied, Stone continued turning the tank until it popped free from the valve. He removed both items and placed them on the ground before grabbing a second tank to repeat the process.

“While I’m doing this, Pilar,” Stone said, “find me some containers to hold fuel.”

Without saying a word, Pilar obeyed by walking over to the camp table and grabbing the jar of pickle juice. After tossing out the liquid, she searched the ground for more empty food jars or cans. By the time she returned, Stone had managed to remove all four valves from the tanks.

“Pilar, since you’re a diver, go ahead and strap a weight belt with weights to the shoulder of each of these tanks. I’m going to do the stuff to finish making our bombs.”

“You know what you’re doing,” Pilar replied.

Stone reached out to grab the jars from her hand and gave her a wink as he turned.

Entering the airplane, he left the jars on a bench seat inside before going forward and dropping into the small bow compartment where the weapon was mounted. He poked through two large ammunition boxes, each one containing about one hundred rounds of a deadly mixture of tracer‍―high-explosive incendiary armor-piercing rounds.

“A hell of a pig in a poke,” Stone mused.

He pulled apart the linked ammunition and selected four high-explosive rounds; then he linked the belt back together. Clutching the rounds in his hand, he left the airplane and saw that Pilar had already strapped the lead weights on the scuba tanks.

“Looks good.”

“Thanks,” she said, looking at the rounds in Stone’s hand. “What kind of material are you going to use to fill the tanks to make them explode?”

“I’m planning on filling each tank with about a gallon of gas from the airplanes. Then I’ll thread the rounds into the necks of the scuba tanks. Why?”

“I can see your reasoning for using the big bullets as fuses. Dropping them from any height should set them off, but why the gas? Why not use the propellant from more of those rounds? I’m no bomb expert, but I can think of several advantages of using the explosive propellant in granular form from the bullets instead of gas. First, a couple of handfuls of the propellant powder or dust, which I assume is self-oxidizing, would have more of an explosive air-to-surface ratio. Second, having a gallon of gas sloshing around inside the tanks doesn’t provide the same surface-to-air ratio. Lastly, I believe the flashpoint for gas is quite high, much more so than loose powder, and it has to be in vapor form. After all, that’s what you’re trying to do, right? Maximize the explosive potential of your bombs?”

Pilar paused long enough to see Stone give her a quizzical look. “However, I know you would have thought of it eventually.”

Stone paused for a minute while looking at the rounds on the workbench. After a nod of his head, he looked at Pilar. “Hey, it’s been a long day, and I’m a bit beat. That is sound advice.”

Pilar smiled at him. “Just trying to do my part.”

“Well,” Stone continued, “it’s nice to see that not all of you academics are politically biased dullards. There’s hope for the American education system after all.”

“Good,” she said. “I’ll take that as a compliment. Now go ahead and get me more rounds. I’d say maybe a dozen or so. I’ll finish making the bombs, and you can spend the time to get familiar with the gun in the bow of that airplane.”

Stone straightened up a bit and answered with a salute before turning to the airplane. He searched the bow of the airplane and found two extra ammunition boxes. After giving Pilar twelve rounds, he returned to the gun mount. He sat in the hard bucket seat behind the weapon. It was a Russian 23 mm antiaircraft gun. He grasped the weapon by its bicycle-like handlebars and moved it around. The weapon was positioned on a short mount with the barrels inserted through a hole in the Plexiglas, which allowed some movement. Stone could see that the weapon was not an original part of the plane, but inserted sometime later, haphazardly, but it was functional. He pulled back the charging handles twice to make sure the weapon was operable, ejecting two rounds as he did.

“Do you think they’ll work?” Pilar asked with one eyebrow raised as Stone pulled up beside her. He saw the four tanks with explosive rounds threaded into the neck openings upside down and the weight belts strapped to their shoulders. The empty casings and projectiles lay separately on the workbench. A pipe wrench lay next to the vise.

“Lady.” Stone drew back slightly. “I see that you may have missed your calling in life. Now help me get them on board.”

Havok was in the cockpit, struggling his way through the flight instructions. He decided to give his tired eyes a break and turned around, looking aft, into the cabin. He saw Stone and Pilar working to load the bombs through the fuselage door and noticed that Pilar was smiling. The sparkle in her eyes reinforced a new determination to survive. With Pilar’s smile firmly imprinted on his mind, he went back to his studying, but he realized the instructions were useless, so he tossed them aside and started to study the controls and gauges. He also realized that he had begun to notice many little things about Pilar, insignificant mannerisms to which, in other women, he would not have given a second thought.

***

As a steel-gray light softened the black eastern sky, the surviving Russian pilot woke up. His legs were damp from the early-morning dew, and his head thundered from vodka. As he sat recovering from his stupor, he looked up at his airplane and spotted three people standing on the port wing, dropping the camouflage netting. Sorrowfully, he realized it was not a bad dream or the vodka.