W.E.B. Griffin - The Corps VII - Behind the Lines

"Go to the left. Maybe we'll find something," Everly replied. As they approached the beach, the western end seemed to recede and then disappear.

"What is this?" Weston asked.

"I think we got a little fucking island," Everly said, pleased.

"Holding two reserve divisions of the Imperial Japanese Army," Weston replied.

Everly looked at him with genuine concern in his eyes. "Why would you say that, Mr. Weston?" he asked.

"I was making a joke."

"Oh."

The sun was low on the horizon when they finally saw a break in the surf. As they approached it, Weston saw that it was a passage between a very small island and the first island they'd found.

There was still no sign of human life, and the only sounds were the distant rustle of the surf and the waves splashing against the bow of the boat. The war that they had so recently left on Corregidor and Bataan-the smells of burned fuel and supplies, the never-ending muted roar of cannon, the dull crump of explosions-could have been happening at another time on a distant planet.

As they entered the passage between the islands, Weston saw a small beach on the larger island. There was no surf.

"We could try to put in there," he said, as much to himself as to Everly. "I don't know how shallow it is. We're likely to go aground."

"Do we have any choice, Mr. Weston?"

Weston steered for the small beach.

They made it all the way to the shore without scraping bottom. As Everly leapt ashore, carrying a rope with him, Weston decided the current flowing through the passage had scoured it clean of sand.

Tying the boat up was no problem. Trees and thick vegetation came right down to the water. Everly looped the line around a thick, twisted tree trunk. The current pulled the boat against what Weston presumed was the solid rock of the shoreline.

What's going to happen now, he thought, is that the current is going to batter the hull against the rocks, whereupon we will sink.

That didn't happen. The current simply held the hull against the rocks with little movement.

Everly heaved himself back aboard.

"There's a goddamned hill, starting right at the trees," he said. "I don't think I could climb it even if it wasn't dark. We'll have to see what happens in the morning."

"There's supposed to be feral hogs on these islands," Weston said.

"What?"

"Wild pigs. Maybe we could shoot one."

Everly's silence made it clear he didn't think that was likely.

"You want to do two-hour watches?" he asked.

"Fine."

"You want to go first, or me?"

"I'll go first," Weston said.

Everly made himself a pillow from some of the clothing he had removed from the bodies, covered himself with the rest, and went to sleep.

In ten minutes, it was so dark Weston had difficulty seeing him.

He sat immobile for perhaps ten minutes, listening to unidentifiable sounds coming from the shore; and then, without thinking about it, he scratched his chest. His skivvy shirt was covered with drying blood.

On all fours, he crawled on the deck, carefully avoiding Everly, until he found the bucket. Then he crawled aft again and stripped. First he carefully rinsed his skivvy shirt and drawers in the water and arranged them on the rail to dry. Then he dipped the bucket into the water, held it over his head, and poured it over his body.

He did this a dozen times-the dried blood had matted his hair together, and didn't want to dissolve-until he was sure he was as clean as he was going to get.

Still naked, he sat down with his legs folded under him. He looked at his watch. The luminous hands told him it was five minutes to eight. He wondered how long it had taken him to find the bucket, do his laundry, and bathe.

Fuck it, I'll count two hours from now. From eight. I'll wake Everly at ten.

He sat there in the dark, his knee touching the web belt with the.45 in its holster, remembering with sudden clarity how the watch had looked when he'd brought it home from the Officers' Sales Store at Pensacola. It was a Hamilton Chronograph, stainless steel. By pressing the appropriate button, he could mark elapsed time of his choice-length of flight; one minute 360-degree turn. Whatever.

It came in a metal box with a spring-loaded cover. It had an alligator strap, and there was a little book of instructions. He wanted one from the moment he first saw it. But it was considered pushy for students to wear one until they had completed Primary Flight and soloed, and stood a reasonable chance to win their wings of gold.

He remembered very clearly the first time he strapped it to his wrist.

On another planet, at another time, when he was a Naval Aviator.

When Weston opened his eyes, Everly, naked, was squatting beside him. It was light. Weston was confused. It shouldn't be light. He woke Everly at ten. Ev-erly therefore should have waked him at midnight. At midnight, it was still dark.

"What's up?"

"I didn't hear a fucking thing for two hours," Everly said. "So I figured, fuck it, why wake you up? And I went to sleep."

"Oh."

"And look what I see when I do wake up," Everly said, and pointed.

Weston sat up.

Two hundred yards offshore was a cabin cruiser.

Adrift, Weston thought. Not under power.

"Can you get us over there?"

"I don't know. I can try."

"It's a long way to swim, and there's sharks, I hear, in these waters."

"Let's get the sail up, and we'll see what happens."

Neither put into words what both thought: There was a chance the cabin cruiser would have food aboard. And a compass. And God only knows what else.

What's it doing here? Adrift?

It took them nearly an hour to reach the boat. There was almost no wind, and the current moved both vessels through the passage and into open water as they pursued it.

As they drew closer, they became aware of the sweet stench of corrupting bodies, and then of a horde of flies.

The boat looked like a ChrisCraft 42, but there was no ChrisCraft insignia.

Probably, Weston decided, a local-manufactured boat, using a ChrisCraft as a pattern. Her tailboard read yet again, Manila, and a faded Manila Yacht Club pennant flew from her rigging.

The stench grew worse as they approached her. When they were at her stern it was nearly overwhelming.

Everly finally managed to get a hand on her, pulled himself aboard, and then threw Weston a line. The moment he saw Weston had grabbed it, he went to the side rail and threw up.

The line was new, still white.

Weston made the boat fast to the cruiser, and then jumped aboard.

There was evidence that the cruiser had been machine-gunned, probably strafed. He saw bullet holes in the deck, in the bulkheads, and in the glasswork.

The ignition key was in the on position. The fuel gauges showed empty, but Weston pressed the engine start button anyway. The engines turned over, but there was no fuel, and they didn't start.

The flies started to bite. There was nothing he could do about them.

Everly came out of the galley carrying cases of canned food.

"There's even beer," he said. "Fucking flies are eating me alive."

"I wonder what happened."

"Who the fuck knows? What I think we should do is stack everything there by the stern, and then I'll go on the boat and you hand it to me."

They made half a dozen trips into the galley before Weston found the cour-age to ask the question that was in his mind even before they had come aboard:

"What happened to the people who were on here?"

"If they were alive, they would have come out by now," Everly said.

Weston went into the galley again; and then, forcing himself, he went through it, into the passageway leading to the cabins.

He could not restrain the urge to vomit. When he had stopped heaving, he had difficulty resisting the urge to flee.