Return to Skull Island (3 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

I stewed on that until later in the afternoon, when we were well into the Gulf and the low Alabama shore had finally disappeared over the northern horizon. So Pat was a gun runner! Whoever would have thought it? It was somehow a little disappointing.

I was leaning over the railing near the bow, watching the water curl and froth as the sharp bow cut through the low, calm swells, when I felt a hand touch my arm. I didn’t need to look to know it was Pat. It certainly wouldn’t have been Englehorn.

“Penny for your thoughts,” she said.

“Thanks. I need the money.”

“One saved is one earned,” she replied, handing me the coin, “or so Ben Franklin or some other wise man once said. Maybe it was John D. Rockefeller. No . . .he was all about dimes, wasn’t he?”

“Speaking of money, I don’t get this deal of yours.”

“Is that what you’re moping about?”

“I’m not moping.”

“Of course you are. Well, the answer is easy: I’m backing a revolution. San Serif was, until just a few months ago, one of the only true democracies in the entire Central American isthmus. It was a real showcase until it was taken over by General Rollo Culebra, who in turn was secretly backed by a certain foreign power with a special interest in establishing a friendly base in this continent. The rightful president, Raoul Espumoso, was imprisoned and his army disbanded and scattered. They outnumber Culebra’s men but the first thing the General had done was to take over the armories—Espumoso’s army is completely weaponless.”

“So you decided to remedy that, did you?”

“Sure did! It’s all for a good cause, naturally. San Serif is poor as dirt. The army was virtually helpless anyway since most of their weapons were surplus from the Crimean War or something like that—as outdated as flintlocks. There’s no way Espumoso can afford to buy new weapons. The U.S. government might give him a loan, but that’d take months and months—even if it was aware of the real danger that Culebra represents, which it is not. And by the time anyone in Washington gets wise to what’s going on, it’ll be too late. So I got the president some good modern up-to-date stuff. Culebra won’t have a chance.”

“How d’you know all this? I mean, how do you know stuff that’d be news even to Uncle Sam?”

“Oh, I have all sorts of connections.”

“I can but imagine.”

I spent most of the few days it took to steam around the Yucatan Peninsula wondering what would happen if we happened to be stopped by a U.S. Navy warship. It’d be hard to explain a hold full of high-powered artillery. And I knew it was high-powered because Pat had gleefully shown me the cargo, which consisted of several dozen big wooden crates all stenciled “Norpen Lumber Company.” She opened a few for me. I was horrified. She had everything short of tanks and field artillery. Even at that there was enough firepower to fight a small war. But then, I suppose that’s exactly what she had in mind. It kind of worried me, the expression on her face when she looked at all of those lethal crates. A girl shouldn’t look at guns and ammunition and bombs the way she did.

The captain had given her his largest cabin—the same one, as it happened, that I’d occupied on the Skull Island expedition—and had set apart an area of the poop deck for her private use. I got Jack Driscoll’s old digs, which kind of shows you how I was rating with Englehorn at the moment, but it was all I needed anyway.

I could see the poop from the bridge and I watched as Pat set up a deck chair she’d dug up from somewhere. She had on a sleek bathing suit—one of those new two-piece jobs that leave the midriff bare. The suit was the same smooth bronze color as her skin. It fitted her like her skin too, and in the bright sunlight it was hard to tell where suit ended and Pat began. And that was a mightily disturbing effect, I can tell you. When she lay still, it was just like looking at a gleamingly new bronze statue. “Reclining Nude” or something like that. She was built like an athlete—not overtly muscular, more like a swimmer or gymnast, maybe, or a professional dancer. Long and sleek, streamlined like an otter or barracuda. And I was right, too, about those legs. She had more of em than a centipede. It wasn’t real obvious, but I could see genuine power beneath those slinky curves—even relaxed, she looked like a cheetah, ready to spring.

“Sure is something, ain’t she?”

I turned to see that Englehorn had come up behind me. He was looking past me at the girl like I’d seen him look once at a racing yacht.

“I wouldn’t have the slightest doubt about that, Captain. What do you know about her, anyway?”

“Not much. She’s got money, no question about that, and plenty of it. So much money that I’m pretty sure she’s not in this for the profit. She paid me in cash and it was all in brand-new thousands.”

“An idealist, huh?”

“Maybe. But she never mentioned any politics or causes or nothin’ to me. To tell you the truth, I think she’s in it more for fun than conviction.”

He shook his head and I knew he was having thoughts about Pat similar to those I’d been having.

I jerked my thumb toward the poop and said: “I’ll say this: she makes your old tub look like a cruise ship.”

“She does add a certain element of distinction, I admit.”

Distinction, indeed, I thought, as the girl stretched and began doing a peculiar series of exercises—not calisthenics or anything like that. Just sitting there, almost motionless, pitting one tawny muscle against another. She barely moved but I could see sweat break out all over her in a glistening shimmer. It made that bronze body look molten.

“You know,” said the Captain as much to himself as me, “for all of that dynamite in my hold I think that girl out there might be the most dangerous cargo this ship has ever carried.”

I had to get back to my cabin and make myself a stiff drink. Holy cow, but this was going to be some trip.

Pat and I ate our meals with the captain and the first mate—a tough mug but honest and absolutely dedicated to Englehorn. His name was Bart and he never opened his mouth but to eat. The rest of us talked about everything but the guns. Pat had the knack of an expert newspaperman in getting people to talk about themselves, not that it was ever very difficult so far as I’ve been concerned. But what amazed me is that she got the usually taciturn Englehorn to open up, Englehorn who normally had little to say about anything that didn’t directly involve whatever matter was immediately at hand, and at that he’d think twice about it. Good old practical level-headed Englehorn. She had him talking about his adventures in the South Seas before and after the Great War and he told her stuff that raised even my jaded hair. Cripes, I thought, I’ve been wasting my time. I should have been making movies about the captain instead of big game hunters and cannibals. Pat couldn’t seem to get enough of it, with no story too harrowing or too gruesome for her. She wrung every last detail from him, licking her pretty lips at each blood-curdling incident as though she had just eaten a liqueur-filled chocolate. I tell you, it kind of gave me the creeps.

Then she got onto me about poor old Kong and, of course, I was off like Billy Sunday in a tent full of sinners. But I’d told the story so many times that it hardly occupied my mind very much—so with the unoccupied part I was able to watch Pat pretty closely. I thought I figured her out just then: she was a thrill junky. Hearing about things that guys like the captain and I have done got her windows all steamy. An armchair adventuress, I figured, getting her kicks second-hand.

Which just goes to show how little I knew.

What it took me almost all the way to San Serif to realize is that for all of our talking, I’d learned virtually nothing at all about Patricia Wildman. She had a slippery way of seeming to have answered a question directly while actually changing the subject entirely. I’ll give you an example.

“What do you do back in New York?” I’d asked her once.

“Oh, I don’t live in New York all the time,” she replied. “I run a little business there, but it doesn’t require much from me. It pretty much looks after itself.”

“Really? And what might that be?”

“It’s almost more of a hobby that gives me plenty of time to take off and do pretty much whatever I like—which is going places and doing things, mostly. I love trouble if I can find it.”

“Is that so? What kind of trouble?”

“Don’t you just love seeing strange places and the strange things people do there? Don’t you just love not knowing what’s around the next corner?”

See what I mean?

Englehorn anchored well out from the little harbor of Las Los, the capital of San Serif. I could see just about all I wanted to see of the town through the captain’s glasses. And at that I figured I’d seen too much. The town looked like someone had dumped it out of a bag.

“Want to come along?” Pat asked as I watched the ship’s launch being lowered. “I’m going ashore to meet a representative of the resistance.”

It was the last thing in the world I wanted to do. What I’d had in mind was sitting under the awning that covered the flying bridge and sipping something ice cold all afternoon. We were barely ten degrees north of the equator and the sun was blistering the paint off the sides of the ship. Besides, Pat was far too enthusiastic and struck me as a girl who’d all too happily walk into a situation that was rougher than she’d counted on, and be glad of it. All I needed was to end up in some greaser jail for the rest of my life. But then, looking into those weird eyes, I thought:
What the hell?

A few minutes later, I found myself being welcomed to sunny Las Los by a pompous official in a blazingly white uniform covered with medals that I just knew in my heart of hearts had only lately been in a pawn shop. He was a fat little bird with black stringy hair and moustache who was rendering into a puddle of grease as I watched.

“Señor, señorita,” he bubbled, “El Jefe walcomes you an’ hopes you weell enjoy yor stay een Los Las!”

“I thought this place was called Las Los’,” I whispered to Pat.

“It doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference,” she shrugged. “Either way it means The The’.”

“I don’t get this,” I continued, as we followed the official—who hadn’t stopped talking since he met us—toward a small building at the end of the wharf. It was a government office of some sort, judging by the flag that flew from it. The harbor master’s office, I supposed. “I don’t get it. Why are we walking into this place bold as brass with a ship full of illegal arms half a mile offshore?”

“Nothing could be simpler,” she said, dismissing my objection with a wave of her hand. “General Culebra wants nothing more than a show of normalcy—to demonstrate that business is not only going on as usual but has even improved under his regime. We’re supposed to be picking up a cargo of sugar and coffee and I assure you the general’s not going to be able to see anything other than the armload of dollars I’ll be piling under his syphilitic nose. He’ll never notice that the boats bringing his cargo out to the
Venture
won’t be returning empty.”

“Sounds absolutely hare-brained to me.”

“Don’t be silly: I’ve thought it all out very carefully.”

She said that as coolly as someone announcing they had a sure-fire recipe for fried chicken. She looked cool, too, dressed entirely in white cotton, her tanned face shaded by a broad-brimmed white straw hat. How she did it was beyond me: I was already drenched to the skin, with stinging sweat pouring into my eyes from under my pith helmet. The heat reflected from the parched ground around us as though from a mirror and it was exactly like standing in front of a glassblower’s furnace. Yet Pat looked like a tower of vanilla ice cream and I knew for a certainty that if I touched her she’d feel twenty degrees cooler than the surrounding air.

However oblivious Pat was to the heat, I was grateful for the shade inside the office, though the temperature was, if anything, greater than it had been out on the pier. Maybe if I hadn’t been so preoccupied with getting my eyes adjusted to the sudden darkness I would have been more aware of the snicking sound of a half dozen automatics being cocked. The chubby little officer turned to face us and said, “Señorita Patricia Wildman, you an’ yor companion are onder arrest.”