Jungle Rules (40 page)

“Oh, you’ll be there, pal,” the captain said, tilting his head to one side as he smiled, and then rolling his eyes and batting his lashes.

“I will?” the lieutenant said, unconsciously blinking back.

“Yes, because Dicky Doo and Stanley Tufts take the freedom bird to Okinawa on Tuesday,” O’Connor began. “News flash. Dot, dot, dot. They’re representing us at the Fleet Marine Force Pacific law conference.”

“Why am I not surprised, but that’s Tuesday, and so what about it? We’re talking Monday morning’s coffee,” Ebberhardt said, and then looked at O’Connor shaking his head. “I’m sure he rubbed it in good for Jon Kirkwood, too, his wife being in Okinawa and all, didn’t he.”

“Yes, he did,” O’Connor purred, and then smiled at the lieutenant, “but Dicky Doo also expressed his regrets at missing you and Tommy Touchdown at the O Club yesterday evening, too. He came in, right after you and this redheaded babe in the showy stewardess outfit left. Oh, and by the way, Gwen, that was a stunning performance at the bar. Sizzling. It’s a movie scene that I know I’ll be replaying in my mind for many nights while I lie in my rack and dream about you.”

“What about Dicky Doo, asshole?” Wayne said, snapping his fingers at Terry O’Connor raising his eyebrows and blinking his eyes at Gwen, who blew a big cloud of smoke back in the captain’s face.

“Oh, he came to the club to tell all of us trolls in the defense section, and he did call us trolls, by the way,” O’Connor said, leaning back in the booth, “that we had a meeting in his office this morning at zero seven, bright and early. Jon said something about it being nice that he had to get up with the chickens, too, on Saturday, along with the rest of us, and so Dickinson changed it to nine o’clock this morning. By the way, he missed you and T. D. there, too.”

“Shit, that’s got him nosing even deeper in my private affairs now,” the lieutenant said, taking his wife’s hand on the tabletop. “He’s been snooping around my shit a lot lately. I figure he suspects that I have something going on out in the ville.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure of that, based on a conversation that McKay had with the Tufts brothers and Charlie Heyster a couple of weeks ago,” O’Connor said, and then slapped himself on the cheeks. “Oh, yes, I didn’t tell you the good news, too. Dicky Doo said it was good news, so it must be. Anyway, Charlie the Shyster got selected for major. Furthermore, when the colonel leaves the first of July, Dicky Doo takes over as the SJA, and Major-Select Shyster will fill his old billet as mojo until the new boss gets here, like in mid-September.”

“Oh, that’s dandy, I’ve got Dicky Doo to contend with until I rotate, the middle of September,” Ebberhardt said, bowing his head as he spoke.

“Think of Jon and me, ass wipe,” O’Connor said. “Dicky Doo extended through November. We rotate in December, if we’re lucky.”

“See, Daddy, not everything’s all bad,” Gwen cooed in her husband’s ear, and kissed his neck.

Then Wayne looked across the table at the captain, still showing a Cheshire cat smile.

“What?” the lieutenant snapped, frustrated at his colleague’s game.

“You never heard why I know you will be in the office early Monday morning to guard the door while I doctor Dicky Doo’s coffee mess,” O’Connor said, bobbing his eyebrows up and down like Groucho Marx.

“What!” Wayne Ebberhardt spat at the captain.

“The mojo got pissed because you and Tommy-poo missed the meeting this morning,” O’Connor said and shrugged. “So he wants you and T. D. in his office Monday morning, standing tall at zero seven hundred. Sorry to ruin your holiday, pal.”

“Ah, fuck,” the lieutenant sighed and hung his head.

“Wayne, we can’t get there by then!” Gwen whined. Then she frowned and looked at the two officers. “That means we have to leave tomorrow afternoon, doesn’t it.”

“Afraid so, honey,” the lieutenant said, putting his arm around his wife and hugging her head to his shoulder.

“Don’t fucking do that,” Gwen snapped, pulling away from her husband. “I’m not a poor baby girl. I’m a pissed-off redheaded woman right now.”

“I know, honey, I’m sorry,” Wayne said, and again tried to hug his wife, but she shot her elbow into his chest, leaving him momentarily stunned and gasping for breath.

Terry O’Connor sank in his seat and felt glad that he had not popped off with a me-too-honey wisecrack. Clearly the woman’s temper had boiled to a dangerous point. He rightly considered that she might break his nose with an ashtray if he said anything.

“We’ll just have to check out tomorrow afternoon, instead of Monday morning,” she sighed, and tears trickled from her eyes. “I hate this war, I hate my job, and I hate having to sneak! Oh, God, September cannot come soon enough. I can quit this Flying Tiger nightmare with the filching hands and smart-ass remarks, from the pilots to the damned ground crew, and go back to my old job at Delta, and you can get out of the damned Marine Corps and be a lawyer in Atlanta, like we planned.”

She fought back her tears, and lit a fresh cigarette as she snuffed out one.

“You okay, ma’am?” the scruffy navy chief in Bermuda shorts said, walking to the table with a platter stacked with several big lobsters, and a large bowl filled with boiled jumbo prawns.

“I think I got a hundred bucks in my wallet, Chief,” O’Connor said, looking at the service trolley loaded with side dishes that a waiter wheeled behind his American boss.

“Let’s see, with the French wine and the drinks for the guys outside, that comes to eighty-seven dollars and ninety cents, Chief Sparks said, and then winked at Gwen Ebberhardt, who now began to laugh.

“Here’s five twenties,” O’Connor said, handing the chief the hundred dollars. Then he looked inside his wallet. “Wait a minute, there’s a five and three ones in here, too.”

“That’s okay, Skipper,” the chief said, and grinned, “I’ll just take what’s left from the hundred for our tips.”

“I fucking got you back, you smart-ass,” Gwen said, laughing at Terry O’Connor.

“I concede victory to you, Missus Ebberhardt,” the captain said, and put out his hand for her to shake, which she took and ceremoniously shook.

Then the redhead reached across the table and snatched the Dixie cup full of supercharged laxative.

“Wait!” O’Connor said, grabbing her hand.

“I want it, Captain,” she hissed, and then pulled her hand and the cup away from his grip. “I have a right to get even with him, putting up with all this nonsense of having to avoid his catching me visiting my husband, and now he’s ruined my weekend, too. Besides, I have a foolproof way to pull it off. You two idiots would just get caught Monday, dumping this in his coffee. You think you’re slick, but you’re just an accident waiting to happen. Both of you. Anyway, I’m good at this sort of thing. Subterfuge is my middle name.”

“Your mother named you subterfuge?” Terry O’Connor said, his eyes sparkling.

“Yes, she did,” Gwen said, holding her head up, dashing out her cigarette, and lighting a fresh one. Then she looked at her husband and at the captain. “Major Dickinson and Stan the Man take my flight Tuesday morning, right?”

Both men nodded yes and smiled.

“What’s the worst that can happen to me if I got caught putting this in his drinks?” she asked and looked at Wayne.

“I don’t know, get fired I guess,” the lieutenant said.

“Dicky Doo would sue the airline, too,” O’Connor offered.

“They deserve it,” Gwen said, and shrugged. “Besides, who said I would get caught? You two, on the other hand, would definitely get nabbed. He’ll figure out his coffee got sabotaged, blame the enlisted guys, who will then put two and two together and let your little secret slip out, if he doesn’t catch you red-handed dumping that shit in the pot in the first place.

“On the other hand, I can put this on my serving cart, and when I fix his coffee, juice, and whatever else he wants to drink, I can simply spoon it in as I pour. He’s sitting down and can’t see what I’m doing, since I’ll park the cart behind his shoulder when I serve him. It will be perfect.”

“Sounds like a plan,” O’Connor said, breaking a claw off a lobster and pulling out a hunk of meat. “You know what Dicky Doo looks like?”

“I’ve seen him a couple of times when I went walking past the law center looking for Wayne. I think I can pick him out of a crowd,” Gwen said, smiling at her husband and taking a boiled prawn from the bowl and dipping it in cocktail sauce. “Besides, I can look on the passenger manifest and locate him by his seat assignment.”

“Just look for the potbellied major with three chins and a black and white flattop haircut,” Wayne Ebberhardt said and laughed.

“Yeah, Gwen,” O’Connor chuckled, pulling lobster meat from the claw, “he’ll be with this sawed-off captain walking with his arms out like a seagull on a hot day.”

“How could I miss them then?” Gwen said, and laughed with the two Marines as they ate.

“Hey, Sparky,” Wayne Ebberhardt called to the chief, “why don’t you tell those guys out there sucking on their beer bottles to come inside and enjoy the air conditioning and help us with all this food.”

 
YAMAGUCHI AND HIS Five-Star Country All-Stars mimicked George Jones while four nearly naked girls go-go danced on round pedestals at each end of the stage. Terry O’Connor and Jon Kirkwood had finished their dinner late, and now drank beer at the Da Nang Air Base Officers’ Club bar.

“Where’s Stanley?” O’Connor said to his partner. “I’ve got a little plan up my sleeve that fell in my lap by accident while reading
Time
magazine on the shuttle this afternoon. It’s perfect.”

“Hey, don’t fuck things up, Terry,” Kirkwood warned. “You start saying shit to Stanley and he’ll figure out you’re tied into this prank and tip the whole thing off.”

“No, no, no,” O’Connor said, shaking his head as he spoke. “I’ll be cool with it. Very subtle.”

“Like a grenade down the shitter,” Kirkwood followed. “Okay, there he is, sitting with his brother and no less than Charlie Heyster.”

“That makes it even better,” O’Connor said, grabbing his beer from the bar. “Come on, you can help.”

“I don’t know about this,” Kirkwood said, picking up his bottle of Olympia and following his buddy to the table where the three prosecutors sat.

“Congratulations, Charlie,” O’Connor said, putting out his hand for the new major-select.

“Thanks, Captain O’Connor,” Heyster said, feeling the power of his newly realized, soon-to-be field-grade status, and already separating himself socially from the company-grade scum.

“Oh, you’re quite welcome, Major-Select Heyster, sir,” O’Connor said, and pulled out a chair and sat with the trio while Jon Kirkwood remained standing and silent.

“Say, Stanley, I hear you’re flying to Okinawa on Tuesday with the mojo,” O’Connor said, taking a pull off his mug of beer.

“Yeah, and what’s it to you, wiseguy?” Tufts snorted, sipping from the top of a glass of ice, scotch, and water.

“Hey, nothing I guess,” O’Connor said, shrugging. “I just wanted to pass on a little good scoop to you, that’s all. If you don’t care to hear it, I’ll go back to the bar.”

“That’s okay. What scoop?” Stanley Tufts said, his curiosity always at a peak when teased with the right question.

“I had to chop over to Marble Mountain today, to take back those rifles that Jon and I ended up with when we got stuck out at Fire Base Ross last November,” O’Connor began, and leaned back in his chair, sipping his beer. “Once I got done, I had to take the shuttle back to base, so I had some time to kill. Anyway, I picked up a copy of
Time
magazine that somebody had left over at the chopper ready room, and took it with me to read. You know, the long ride and all. So I open up the magazine and low and behold they’ve got this article on flight fatigue and how to beat it. I thought of you, since you and the mojo are flying out on Tuesday. I got the magazine in the hooch, if you want to read it.”

“No, I don’t have time, but thanks,” Stanley said, and sipped his scotch. “Anything good that I could use?”

“Oh, sure, lots of tips,” O’Connor said, and then looked at Kirkwood and smiled. “Best thing you and the major can do before you fly Tuesday morning is to drink lots and lots of water Monday night. You know, at high altitude there is no moisture in the air. You dry out really bad on a plane, so lots of water in your system before you fly keeps you fresh. Like a rose. Take it out of the water, it wilts. People work the same way.”

“Sure, that makes sense,” Stanley said, looking seriously at O’Connor. “How much water should I drink, did it say?”

“Yeah,” O’Connor said, and shrugged. “They gave it in liters. Two liters the night before, and a couple more liters an hour or so before the flight, if you can handle that much water. Sounds like a lot to me.”

“Two liters?” Stanley said and wrinkled his brow. “That’s like half a gallon or so, right?”

“Yeah, about that,” Charlie Heyster said, taking out a briar pipe and lighting it.

Jon Kirkwood motioned with his head and eyebrows at Terry O’Connor to look at the pretentious man assuming the mantle of a field-grade Marine. Both defense lawyers smiled.

“So I drink half a gallon of water the night before I fly, and then another half a gallon that morning, too?” Stanley said, shaking his head. “Sounds like a hell of a lot of water.”

“Ah, you know these magazines,” O’Connor said, shrugging and drinking his beer. “I bet if you just drank all you could hold, that would be plenty. Hell, any is better than nothing, you know.”

“I could make sure that the major and I drink plenty on the plane, too,” Stanley said, smiling.

“You sure could, Stanley. You sure could,” O’Connor said, and grinned at Kirkwood, who rolled his eyes and walked away from the table.

“THAT’S US, STANLEY, scoop it up and let’s go,” Major Dudley L. Dickinson said to Captain Stanley Tufts, pushing his chair away from the café table in the passenger terminal snack bar at Da Nang Air Base. A voice over the public address system had just echoed through the waiting area the first call for boarding the Tuesday morning Flying Tigers freedom bird flight to Okinawa and then to Norton Air Force Base at San Bernardino, California.