Гарольд Роббинс - The Raiders

Spring break came, and they hadn't hauled their ashes.

It occurred to Jonas that they were too obvious. Girls they met knew what they wanted. The girls didn't want the same thing.

Finally, in April, Jerry succeeded in persuading two girls to visit the dorm room. They were not supposed to be there, so they had to climb up a fire escape, enter the dorm through a window, and slip along the hall to the boys' room — which process alone had discouraged several girls from accepting an invitation.

They were town girls. That is to say, they lived in Cambridge. One was still in high school. The other had graduated and worked as a waitress. Both lived with their parents and had to be home by eleven.

Neither was exquisitely beautiful. Helen was dark-haired, brown-eyed, and chubby. Ruth was blond and thinner. Her face was marred by pimples — only two that evening, but the marks of others remained on her cheeks.

None of these four young people had any doubt why the two girls had come to visit the two boys in their dormitory room. Only two questions remained: Which girl would be intimate with which boy, and what were the terms of this visit?

The two girls, it turned out, expected to be paid five dollars apiece. Jerry shook his head firmly. Maybe two, he said.

Jonas seized Jerry by the sleeve of his gray tweed jacket and shoved him out into the hall. "Listen, goddammit," he said. "Didn't you ever read Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain?"

"What's that got to do with —"

"All their lives the 'pilgrims' had dreamed of going for a boat ride on the Sea of Galilee. When the boatmen asked for eight dollars, they offered four, and the boatmen rowed away. Those 'pilgrims' never did get to sail on the Sea of Galilee. Because of four dollars divided among eight men. I'm going to give one of those girls five dollars and get my wick dipped. I suggest you give five to the other one."

Jonas strode back into the room and handed a five-dollar bill to Helen, the dark, chubby one. For his decisiveness he got his choice. Jerry would later complain of that, but for now he grudgingly counted out five one-dollar bills to Ruth.

Once again decisive, Jonas led Helen to the maroon-plush-upholstered sofa that was the centerpiece of the living room. His eyes shooting annoyance, Jerry took Ruth into the bedroom.

Helen undressed, directly without diffidence or hesitation. When she was naked, she helped Jonas undress. "Y’ know," she said, "I bet this here's your first time."

"Not really," he said.

She lifted his penis in her hand. "Well," she said. "Y' got what it takes, anyway. Y' ready?"

"Sure." He didn't know the term foreplay but had supposed there would be something before the act. But he didn't want her to suppose he didn't know what to do. "Sure. Let's do it."

She opened her purse and took out a Coin-Pak. Stripping the foil off, she pulled out the rubber and stretched it on her fingers. "Not circumcised," she muttered. "Bet y' friend is. Anyway, y' want it skinned back?"

"No."

She rolled the condom onto his erect penis. Then she lay on her back and spread her legs. "C'mon."

It was purely mechanical. Yet the satiation was so complete that it exhausted him. When he was finished and dropped his weight on her hips, Helen tousled his hair and patted his back: the first sign from her of anything like affection. He became conscious that his skin and hers were wet and their sweat was mingling. Their odors mingled. It had not occurred to him until then to kiss her, and she had not offered herself to be kissed, but he kissed her now and felt her tongue coming between his lips and into his mouth.

When Jerry and Ruth came out of the bedroom, Jonas was on his back under Helen, he was in her, and she was moaning quietly as she rotated her hips. His eyes were closed. So were hers. They were not aware that the other couple stood gaping, watching them.

"Well, Jee-zuss Christ!" said Ruth.

HE RETURNED TO CAMBRIDGE IN THE FALL OF 1943. in February 1944 he registered for the draft, using as his address the dormitory where he had lived the past year with Jerry Rabin. Then he enlisted in the United States Army.

The first thing the army did was give him a new name. The army was no-nonsense about names. Everybody had a first name, a middle initial, and a last name. The sergeant who handled the matter took his first name as Jonas, his middle initial as E. (for Enrique), and his last name as Batista. What "Cord y" meant, he didn't know and didn't care. So far as the United States Army was concerned, Jonas Enrique Raul Cord y Batista was Private Jonas E. Batista.

Within a few days his name was changed even further. The guys in his outfit didn't like the name Jonas. It sounded too much like the guy that was swallowed by the whale, one man said. Or like Judas, which was a jinx. Anyway, he didn't look like a Jonas. They tried calling him Joe, but there were too many Joes. Batista? So, okay, he was Bat. The nickname stuck. Bat. Men called him Bat who had no idea his last name was Batista.

Two weeks after he arrived at Fort Dix he was summoned to the office of a Captain Barker.

"Where you from, Batista?"

"Cambridge, Mass, sir."

"Graduate of Culver."

"Yes, sir."

"Fluent in German. And French."

"Yes, sir."

"Shit, Private. The army's got better things for you to do than basic infantryman. I'm transferring you. The army's got ninety-day wonders, not just the navy."

"Captain's looking for you, Lieutenant. He's in the beer hall up the street."

First Lieutenant Jonas E. Batista nodded at Sergeant David Amory and walked off toward the beer hall, a hundred yards up the street. He had just finished interrogating three German civilians, without learning anything he needed to report to Captain Grimes. A cold drizzle had been falling all morning, and he walked on slippery cobblestones.

"Hey, Bat." Another lieutenant, named Duffy, came across the street. "Grimes is calling in the platoon leaders."

"Yeah, I just got the word."

"What's up, ya know?"

"Change of orders," said Bat.

"How ya know?"

"Hell, there's always a change of orders."

Duffy was an older man, almost thirty. He was in fact older than Captain Grimes. Bat was the youngest platoon leader in the company. He was the youngest first lieutenant in the battalion. He had six months of combat experience and had suffered a flesh wound in the left armpit in Belgium — wound enough to merit a Purple Heart. He had killed a German soldier — that is, killed him one-on-one, not just by directing platoon fire. Still almost a year short of his twentieth birthday, Bat had acquired the reputation of a tough, effective, aggressive infantry officer.

Inside the beer hall, Captain Grimes sat at one of the heavy oaken tables. Four big steins of beer stood on the table, one for himself and one for each of his three platoon leaders. A map was spread on the table.

"Okay, guys," said the captain. "Everything's changed." He put a finger on the symbol for a village on the Rhine. "That's where we're going. Remagen. The Krauts haven't blown up the Ludendorff Bridge yet. There just might be a chance, just a chance, to capture that bridge before it goes boom. Our orders are to bust ass into Remagen as fast as we can. We're gonna outrun the tank companies, 'cause the roads are shitty. If we run into light resistance, we bypass it if we can. Other infantry companies are moving. Whoever gets to the bridge first gets the honor of going across."

"And of getting our asses blown into the river when the demolition charges go off," said Sergeant Cline, leader of the third platoon. Cline had the most experience of them all, more than the rest of them combined, and he was a battle-weary cynic.