Joint Task Force #4: Africa (21 page)

Rockdale pulled his radio out and made several calls. The two of them waited anxiously for several minutes before accepting the fact that either: one, Carson was unable to answer; or two, Carson’s radio was turned off.

“Was Carson to our left or right when we were coming down?” MacGammon asked.

“He was to our right. I was directly in front of you and he was off to our right.”

“Then we need to search at a ninety-degree angle to our trees.”

Rockdale’s eyes brightened. “I see what you mean. If I landed in front of you in that tree,” he turned facing the tree from where he had fallen and pointed. “And you landed in this one.” Rockdale jerked his thumb toward the one where MacGammon landed. “Then he must have come down in that direction,” Rockdale pointed right.

“Wow, Rocky. You’re not as dumb you pretend to be.”

“And, you’re not so dumb yourself, for a nobody from New Jersey.”

MacGammon grinned. “Don’t push your luck, you Southerners are all alike. Still fighting the Civil War and making fun of those who won it.”

“I’m from Maryland.”

“Maryland—Georgia—Kentucky. It don’t matter. They’re all south of Jersey City. Well, should we go do this and see if we can find Carson before he goes crazy with worrying about us?”

Rockdale nodded.

MacGammon pulled out his compass and took a reading. “Let’s go.”

A moment later, Rockdale fell into step behind MacGammon as the man from New Jersey tromped off, glancing down once more at the compass as he pushed aside the bush blocking their path. Hopefully, they were
correct, and somewhere in this direction Stetson had landed. Rockdale followed three or four feet behind MacGammon, who treated each bush, vine, limb, and decaying obstacle as minor inconveniences. He marched forward as if he was on a stroll through a city park. Even Rockdale knew that jungles, much like the woods of western Maryland, were filled with wild beasts. With the exception of bears, wolves, and the occasional panther, Maryland was safe, and you always had “pound 77” to raise the police. Here there was neither a “pound 77” nor 911. All they had was what they had. And MacGammon walked as if there were no one or nothing around except the two of them, protected by the magical cloak of the rain and a compass showing them where to head.

MacGammon was right. Taking everything with them rather than creating a base camp was the right way to do it.

Seconds turned into minutes which turned into more minutes. Rockdale glanced back once during their movement to discover their path had disappeared behind the jungle bushes and vines. If MacGammon had listened to him and left the parachute behind, it would have been lost forever, and he’d have had to put up with MacGammon’s bitching. For that alone, he was glad MacGammon had taken it.

MacGammon stopped, causing Rockdale to nearly bump into him.

“What?”

“Shhh,”
MacGammon said, raising his finger to his lips. “Listen.”

Rockdale turned his head from side to side. “Listen for what?”

“It sounded like moaning—”

“Moaning?”

MacGammon motioned downward with his hand. “Just listen for a moment. It sounds like you did when I found you.”

Rockdale listened, but try as he might he couldn’t seem to separate the sound from the returning noises of the jungle. They rode and rolled over each other, intermixed with the hot, humid breeze that wafted through the leaves. Small patches of fog, from evaporating moisture, had begun to fill the spaces between the bushes. Africa was a beautiful, dangerous place. If you didn’t like the weather, wait a minute, it would change.

A cry came from their right, and in the next instant, Rockdale followed after MacGammon, who was bolting through the bushes, slapping them aside, as he hurried in the direction from where the cry came.

CHAPTER 9

”HE’S STILL ALIVE,” MACGAMMON SAID, LOOKING UP AT
Carson.

Rockdale pulled a handkerchief from a pocket and wiped the sweat away from his eyes. Carson hung by his harness straps from the parachute. Thick bushes and bramble stopped the two sailors from approaching Carson any closer from below.

“If he hadn’t moaned, we would never have found him,” Rockdale said, stuffing the handkerchief back into the pocket. “Now how in the hell are we going to get him down?”

“But he isn’t moaning now. All he’s doing is swaying a little in the wind. Maybe he’s dead?”

“And maybe he’s not. Even if he’s dead— Stop it, Mac! We’ve got to get him down, whether he’s dead or alive.”

“I don’t see how we’re going to get him down,”
MacGammon protested. “He’s at least forty feet off the ground, and nowhere near anything we can climb out—”

“Stop it, Mac. Just stop it.”

“And to get under him, we’re going to have to chop our way through this mess.”

“You know. Everything with you is no. Everything is too hard. Everything is so fucked up. Just stop it.”

“Rocky, you’re one fucked up mother, you know,” MacGammon replied, shaking his head. “You know what you need?—”

Without thinking, Rockdale pushed the smaller man, causing MacGammon to stumble.

“Hey, man! This ain’t the time and place for you to start a fight with me.” MacGammon took two steps forward, slammed both hands against Rockdale’s chest, and shoved the larger man. “Just don’t fuck with me!”

Rockdale stumbled backward a couple of steps, the anger leaving him as easily as it had taken hold. “Sorry, Mac. You’re right. I don’t know what came over me.” Rockdale tossed his helmet onto the jungle floor and ran a hand through his thick black hair. “Must be—”

“Must be the heat? The rain? How about us realizing we’re alone in the middle of a motherfucking jungle with no McDonald’s or even a Wal-Mart nearby. Man, you couldn’t ask for a clearer sign of being lost.” MacGammon laughed, stepped forward, and slapped Rockdale on the arms. “You da man here, Rocky. Just keep your cool. Last thing I want to do is to have to carry both you and Stetson on my shoulders out of this mess.”

“Whadaya mean carry both of us?” Rockdale asked, slapping MacGammon on the shoulder. “Any carrying to do, I’ll probably have to do it.”

MacGammon pointed up at Carson. “Him, I’d have to carry because he’s medical, and you, because if I have
to beat your ass, you’re going to be medical, too,” he said in a dry voice.

“So how do we get him down?” Rockdale asked, his hands braced on his hips, watching their shipmate swinging above them as if some giant had hung him up out of reach.

MacGammon took a deep breath. “You’re right, we’re going to have to figure out how to get him down. It looks as if he’s unconscious, so it ain’t gonna be easy. Maybe we should circle him and see what the terrain is like.” MacGammon tossed his flight helmet near Rockdale’s.

Rockdale’s eyebrows bunched. “Why? You think maybe we’ll find a better way into him?”

MacGammon shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe we’ll think of something if we’re doing something, even if whatever we’re doing doesn’t make sense. My dad always said it was better to be doing something than doing nothing.”

Rockdale nodded. “Okay, I’ll go this way, and you go that way,” he said, pointing to the left. “You are right about one thing. Anything is better than standing here watching him.”

A few moments later MacGammon shouted, “Hey, Rocky, can you see me?”

Rockdale stopped. He figured he was at a ninety-degree angle to Carson from where he and MacGammon started. “Raise your hand!”

A hand broke above the brush on the other side of Carson and nearly exactly opposite to where Rockdale stood. “Yeah, I see you, Mac. Keeping walking and keep Carson positioned off your right shoulder. That should keep you in a circle.”

“What’re you talking about, Rocky? I can barely see him because of this jungle crap. I ain’t tall like you and him.”

Rockdale ignored the comment and continued to circle.
How are we going to get Carson down?
The moaning was what drew them to their lost shipmate, and, so far, he hadn’t seen anything that would convince him MacGammon was wrong about Carson being dead.
Maybe the moans were his death rattle. Maybe Carson was in such pain, he cycled between consciousness and unconsciousness.
He looked up at Carson. The crewman’s hands hung limply down the sides of his flight suit; fingers limp too. The flight boots drooped, the steel toes pointing down. Rockdale stopped, wiped the sweat away from his eyes again, and pulled the matted, wet flight suit away from his body for a moment. Small patches of isolated fog hung beneath the bushes where the earlier rain continued to evaporate from the wave of hot, humid air rolling across the jungle. He pulled the left sleeve away, feeling a slight coolness as the fabric lifted off his arm. Maybe he and MacGammon—and Carson—would never be dry again. Maybe God, or whoever the supreme being is, had decided this was their hell. Never dry again. Maybe when the rain evaporated, perspiration replaced it, and when the morning and afternoon rains came, they washed the sweat away for a while. He released the sleeve, watching as it quickly settled back onto his arm. The survival vest trapped the water and sweat beneath it.

He turned his attention away from his flight suit and back to Carson. Squinting, he eyed the harness straps between Carson’s legs. If they didn’t rescue the man soon, those straps would act like a tourniquet, if they weren’t already, and stop the blood flowing to the legs. The legs and feet would start to die without blood. Carson’s fingers looked as if they moved. He leaned forward, concentrating on the fingers. They moved again.

The bushes looked more accessible here. Rockdale
pushed them aside and started working himself closer to where Carson was hanging. Ten feet closer, he stopped and stared, his hand over his eyes. Yes, he was right. The man’s fingers were moving. Not fast or often, but they were moving.

“Mac! He’s alive!” Rockdale shouted. He jumped around, elated over seeing Carson move. In the back of his mind there had been this moronic thought of what they would do if Carson was dead. You couldn’t keep a dead body with you in this heat. They would have had to bury him. Out here. With no headstone, and little chance of ever returning to find the body.

“Well, what’d you expect him to be? It ain’t as if he’s hit anything other than the trees when he came down. It ain’t as if we found him because he was quiet!”

“No! But, you said—”

“I said he might be dead. I didn’t say he was dead, and don’t you go putting words into my mouth.”

“His fingers are moving.” Rockdale’s head moved side to side as he tried to spot MacGammon.

“That’s good news, Rocky. Tell him to reach up and unsnap his harness and quit fiddling around!”

“I don’t think he’s conscious.”

Rockdale continued to stare at his dangling shipmate. After a few minutes, Rockdale cupped his mouth and shouted, “We’ll get you down, Stetson! It’ll take a few minutes, but be patient. We’re here, and we’ll get you down.”

Nearby, bushes rustled, startling Rockdale, and causing him to jump back. The bushes parted and MacGammon emerged. “To hell with walking around him. Who’s idea was that? And how in the hell are we going to get him down?” MacGammon cupped his mouth and turned toward Carson. “Carson, you asshole, you’d better not be goofing off and making us worry for nothing. If you ain’t, then be patient
for more than a bit while we figure out how to get you down!”

“Yours.”

“Yours what?”

“Your idea to walk around him.”

“Next time I come up with something that doesn’t make sense, do what you always do and tell me it’s a sucky idea.”

“His fingers are moving,” Rockdale said, pointing up.

“I see them. That doesn’t mean shit, Rocky. Means he’s alive, or those fingers could be moving with the wind.”

“What wind? Damn, Mac, you are one dispassionate mother!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You keep throwing those big words at me and one of these days, I’m gonna recognize one of them.” MacGammon shrugged. “Okay, he’s alive. You win. But, either he regains consciousness, or we’re going to have to cut—”

The two aircrewmen looked at each other and together said, “Cut!”

“A long stick,” Rockdale offered. “That’s what we need. Something—” He stopped, bent down, and started shoving the bushes apart.

“To tie a survival knife on the end of it, and we can use it—” MacGammon started looking in the other direction.

“Like we use a tree trimmer back home.” Rockdale retraced his steps toward the nearest tree.

Five minutes later Rockdale held up a long, crooked limb nearly twenty feet long. “I’ve got one!” he shouted.

MacGammon dashed through the bushes until he reached Rockdale. Rockdale held the limb out. “What’d you think?”

“It would never sell at Home Depot,” MacGammon replied, reaching out and taking the limb. “But, you’re right,” he said with a smile. “It’ll suit our purpose.”

Rockdale dropped to his knees and pulled his survival knife out. He aligned it alongside the narrow end of the limb. “Here, hold it while I tie it.”

With MacGammon holding the knife steady, Rockdale wrapped cord around the handle, binding it to the limb.

“It’s not going to be long enough, you know?”

“I know,” Rockdale answered. He looked at the tree. “I think one of us is going to have to climb the tree and shimmy out close enough to the parachute to cut the lines.”

“Let me see if I have this right. One of us is going to climb the tree and slide out there on one of those limbs so we can cut him free.”

Rockdale stood and hefted the makeshift tree trimmer. He pushed it up and down a few times.

“Rocky, that someone has to be me. I’m the lightest of us two.”

Rockdale stopped hoisting the tree trimmer and looked at MacGammon. “No, I’ll do it,” he said quietly.

“Man, you’re so full of bullshit, you’re eyes are brown. Ain’t no way you’re gonna climb that tree. It wasn’t four hours ago, you were coasting in and out of dreamland. Be just my luck to let you do this and I find myself squatting here going ‘tsk tsk’ while looking at what used to be you, splattered all over the ground, and Carson still up there playing swingman.” MacGammon reached over and jerked the tree trimmer from Rockdale. “I’m the only goddamn healthy one of us,” he said and then quickly mumbled, “And I’m not feeling too good myself.”

Rockdale reached over and wrapped a hand around the makeshift trimmer. MacGammon jerked it. “No!” Rockdale held his hand out, motioning downward. “You can do it, Mac. I’m not trying to take it away from you, but you can’t climb the tree and hold onto this thing at the same time. I’ll stand—”

“See! I told you so. I knew you wanted me to go.” MacGammon grinned. He reached over and pushed Rockdale’s mouth closed. “Shut your mouth before one of those African flies that put you asleep flies in it.”

“But—”

“I’m just kidding, Rocky. It only makes sense for me to go.” MacGammon let go of the trimmer, turned, and put his hands on his hips. He scrutinized the tree, his eyes traveling upward as if mapping out his climb.

“I can hoist you to that low limb.”

“You’re going to have to. Otherwise, I’m going to have to make like one of those cartoon characters and run up the side of it. I don’t think I can do that.”

The two stood at the base of the tree. Rockdale watched quietly as MacGammon took his survival vest off, folding it beside the tree. Rockdale noticed the flight suit was a darker, wetter green where the survival vest had been.

MacGammon nodded. “Don’t forget where we left our helmets. We’ll need them tonight.”

MacGammon took his gloves off and tucked them into the leg pockets of his flight suit. “Can climb better without them on.”

“You ready?”

“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”

Rockdale cupped his hands, the fingers interlaced. Just as MacGammon stuck his left foot into the hand cradle, moans brought them up short. MacGammon brought his foot down and both men looked, staring quietly at Carson. The swaying airman’s head came up slowly. The visor was still down on the dangling sailor’s helmet, hiding the face from the nose up.

“Carson! Carson! You okay?” Rockdale shouted, his hands cupped around his mouth. Moans answered him.

“Stetson! You son of a bitch! Wake up and answer us! If you can’t answer us, then at least unlatch your chest strap.”

Carson’s head rose and turned several times. It seemed to wobble on his neck. Rockdale pulled his handkerchief out and wiped his forehead and face. Carson must have hit his head coming through the trees. For him to be out this long, his concussion had to be worse than the one he suffered falling out of the tree.

Rockdale and MacGammon waved their arms over their heads, both shouting at Carson, “Over here. We’re over here.”

Carson’s head swiveled until he looked in their direction. Rockdale saw Carson’s lips moving, but neither man could hear what he was saying. “You hear anything?”

“His lips are moving.”

“Listen.”

Rockdale shut his eyes, concentrating on listening.