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"The Roacherian Effect" A novel by John C. Delavan
Chapter Five
As Patti put down the telephone, the waiter stepped up
and waited with a questioning look. Without saying anything she nodded
her thanks and motioned for him to take the instrument away. He could
see she was disappointed about something, and returned immediately. "May
I freshen your drink, Miss White?"
"No, thank you, Cecil. May I have the check, please?"
"Certainly. You won't be staying with us for lunch then?"
"No, I -- " Patti hesitated. "No, Skipper can't make it," she said, her
face beginning to brighten, "so I'm going shopping for a boat." Her
instantaneous change from disappointment to happiness caught Cecil by
surprise.
"Ooh! I only wish I could." He smiled enviously.
Patti had really looked forward to sharing her good news with Skipper.
Disappointment spoiled her appetite, but she wouldn't allow herself to
stay down in the dumps. And, since she was right here where the boats
were, she decided to spend a pleasant afternoon looking with a little
more interest than she'd allowed herself in the past. Leaving a ten
dollar bill to cover the check and a hefty tip for Cecil, she strolled
outside into the California sunshine.
* *
Patti walked around the harbor for hours in the warmth
of the sun, visiting nearly all the yacht sales offices. Along the way
she accumulated a small library of boating literature and a new pair of
sneakers to replace her high heel pumps that had quickly become painful.
She also purchased several yachting magazines to which she planned to
subscribe. Surprisingly, although her feet were a little sore from
walking so long, she wasn't tired -- just exhilarated. She'd also
determined that if Skipper came home at all this evening she'd have a
surprise waiting for him, and nothing would get him away from her
tonight.
Driving toward Skipper's house perched on the low cliffs overlooking the
beach at Laguna, thoughts of his smooth, well-muscled physique occupied
her thoughts and spread warmth throughout her body.
The guard at the gate of the exclusive private community waved Patti
through. She visited Skipper often, and had permanent clearance to
enter. She hoped Skipper wasn't home yet -- not that she didn't want to
see him. Quite the contrary. She wanted to surprise him. Patti knew what
Skipper liked; and, just by happy coincidence, she liked it too. By the
time she reached Skipper's sprawling, two-story home overlooking his
private beach, she was determined to do battle with any manner of
monster before she relinquished a single minute of their time together
tonight. She pressed a remote control, opening the door of the private
garage Skipper had set aside for her use and pulled the Mercedes inside.
Then she went upstairs to get ready.
Not long after, Patti heard the low, rumbling growl of the Cobra, then
Skipper coming up the stairs from the main garage. She was ready and
waiting, or rather hiding, in the study just off the master bedroom
suite. Listening intently, she heard Skipper go out to the patio
downstairs, then come back inside and start the washing machine in the
laundry room. She was almost exasperated with him when she finally heard
him toss his clothes into the hamper and step into the shower. Now it
was time to make her move.
Skipper was totally preoccupied as he stood in the shower and soaked up
the heat of the steaming water. He sighed, letting the water run over
his head as he leaned back, resting his muscular shoulders against the
smooth red tile. With his eyes half closed his thoughts ran again to the
gouges on the edge of the Intertech building wall. He knew what made
them, but why did he keep thinking these were the key to the riddle?
What was so unusual about them?
His train of thought was broken and he visibly jerked into full
alertness when he sensed another person in the room, even though the
steaming water running over his head drowned out all sound. Through the
film of steam on the glass enclosure he recognized Patti's graceful
movements and closed his eyes again. He felt her soft hands encircle his
waist and caress his back. He felt her warm lips.
They held each other close as the warm water splashed across the red
Spanish tiles and ran in rivulets across their bodies.
* *
Later in the evening, they ate dinner on the patio
looking out over a moonlit ocean, the smell of mesquite charcoal
mingling with the fresh salt air and the booming rhythm of the surf
against the rocky shore below. Patti told Skipper of her promotion and
decision to buy her own boat, and they celebrated. When the meal was
finished, with their arms around each other, they strolled inside, down
flagstone steps into the sunken living room. They relaxed on the sofa
and propped their feet up on the open hearth of a fire pit set in
natural stone and embedded in a glass wall affording a spectacular
panorama of the vast Pacific.
Raised by a single mother, Patti had been forced to become self-reliant
before the age of ten. Her mother worked hard at two physically
demanding jobs, and did the best she could for the two of them. Patti
had taken over caring for the house and fixing meals. Her mom was just
too tired from working when she came home to do much except put her feet
up and eat the food Patti brought her. Although there was never enough
money for extravagances, she never went without necessities--or love.
Patti was a lady from the tips of her toes to the top of her head, and
she had class which was neither affected nor overbearing. Although her
clients ranged from the extremely wealthy to the very poor, she treated
them all with the same mixture of dignity, respect and gentle courtesy.
As Kipling had said it, she could "...walk with kings, nor lose the
common touch..." Her mother gave her the best start she could, but Patti
earned the rest, making her way through college and law school with
part-time jobs, scholarships and student loans. One of the happiest days
of her life was being able to tell her mom she could retire, and let
Patti look after her. Her mother only lived two more years.
Now, with Skipper, with her success in school and in her career, she
felt she had achieved a certain degree happiness and contentment. More,
in fact, than she'd previously thought possible. But the scars of a
broken home and the ultimate loss of her mother had not faded, and she
feared she would never be able to commit herself to any man, even
Skipper, or live in his house on a full time basis.
Skipper was warm and relaxed. He always felt comfortable when he was
with Patti. All the material things good fortune had brought into his
life would tarnish a little without her. Skipper remembered a line
someone had written in his high school year book, "All good things in
life are free. I don't think you know that." He even remembered who had
written it, and had been a little upset by it for years. Now Skipper
felt he was beginning to understand. He finally had all the material
things he'd ever wanted, but still felt very empty until Patti had
entered his life and filled in a large part, but not all, of that void.
She was a his lover, a very close, and very dear friend.
Skipper's thoughts turned back to a time years before when he was a
Captain in the Green Berets, on a training exercise in the Pacific
Southwest. He was Jump Master that night and vividly remembered the
events that led up to him finding his fortune, playing out in slow
motion on the movie screen in his mind.
His A-Team was to make a nighttime, low-altitude parachute jump into the
"enemy's" area of operations. From the drop zone they were to infiltrate
the enemy command post and create as much confusion and disruption of
enemy activities as possible. No problem. He'd done the same routine
many times in the harsher reality of actual warfare throughout the
world. Still, the realism he strove for while training with his team
brought him close to the fear and exhilaration he felt in combat, and
the even greater fear that he might somehow fail. The fear that, in his
father's eyes, he wouldn't be "enough." It was that same fear that
constantly drove him to do more and be better than he thought he could.
Skipper remembered seeing the Air Force Load Master give him the "TWO
MINUTES!" warning, holding two fingers in front of Skipper's camouflaged
face.
Passing the warning on to the rest of his team, Skipper raised both
hands palm up over his head, and yelled, "STAND UP!"
The team lurched to their feet, each man weighed down with well over two
hundred pounds of parachute, weapons, ammunition and other equipment.
The red light near the open exit door blinked on. Forming a hook with
the index finger of his right hand, Skipper raised it up and down over
his head, shouting, "HOOK UP!" Simultaneously, all eleven other men on
his team hooked their parachute static lines to the overhead cable.
Tapping his own chest with open palms, he hollered, "CHECK EQUIPMENT!"
over the din in the nearly empty cargo plane. This was followed shortly
with the command, "SOUND OFF FOR EQUIPMENT CHECK!"
From man to man, starting at the front of the aircraft and working its
way back to Skipper standing near the open jump door, the men slapped
each other on the hip and shouted "OKAY!" after inspecting each other's
equipment.
Skipper moved to the rear of the door and hooked up his own static line.
Moving the team closer to the door, Skipper handed control of his static
line to the Load Master, who gave him the "ONE MINUTE" warning to pass
along. Grasping the inside edges of the open exit door and stomping hard
on the small step outside, Skipper leaned out into the screaming
slipstream; looking all around, above and below, for anything that would
endanger them during the jump. Satisfied, he stepped back into the
plane.
"THIRTY SECONDS!" shouted the Load Master.
Skipper passed it along to the team members who stood bracing themselves
against the slight bucking and vibrating of the big cargo plane as it
tried to stay in the air at speeds slow enough for the men to jump
safely. Skipper leaned back outside the aircraft again, looking for the
proper signal from the drop zone team on the ground that would tell him
conditions were good enough to put the team "in the air."
There it was.
Stepping back again, Skipper pointed to the first man in the "stick" and
then to the door. "STAND IN THE DOOR!"
The first man in line moved forward, handing his static line off to
Skipper who slapped it to the end of the cable at the bulkhead near the
door. The entire A-Team moved forward as though connected to one another
by a string, and the lead man placed one foot on the step and both hands
on the outside skin of the aircraft.
Skipper watched the red light over the door, waiting for it to turn
green.
Blink. The light shined green.
Slapping the first man hard on the back of the leg he shouted, "GO!" The
rest of the team followed automatically; Skipper quickly taking each
man's static line and slapping his thigh with a shouted, "GO!" When the
last man cleared the door, Skipper leaned out and checked to the rear to
make sure nobody had hung up and was being towed by the plane. Everyone
was clear, and he could see eleven parachutes dimly silhouetted against
the dark night sky. Skipper briefly leaned back into the plane, gave the
Load Master the "all clear" thumbs-up signal, then turned and propelled
himself out the door.
"Tight body position, feet and knees together, chin down, elbows in and
hands on the reserve 'chute", Skipper recited mentally.
"ONE THOUSAND!" He could hear the deployment bag containing his 'chute
being pulled from his backpack, and the rubber bands snapping as they
released the shroud lines. "TWO THOUSAND! Now a fluttering sound mixing
with the fading roar of the aircraft.
"THREE THOUSAND!" He heard the popping of the canopy as it snapped open
and the tug of the harness as his rate of descent slowed dramatically.
As the drone of the aircraft grew faint in the distance Skipper looked
up at his 'chute, then checked below. The parachute had deployed
perfectly, with only a half twist at the risers that straightened itself
out immediately. But a wind had sprung up which was rapidly separating
him from the rest of the team. In fact, half of them had already hit the
ground and they were all landing on the other side of a low hill -- the
hill that marked the far edge of the drop zone, and he was already
almost a half mile beyond. Skipper turned into the wind trying to
minimize the amount of distance between himself and the rest of the
team.
The A-Team had jumped with the MC1-1B steerable parachute -- steerable,
but not very. Compared to the sport parachutes, the old MC1-1B handled
about as responsively as the Queen Mary -- which is permanently moored
in Long Beach Harbor.
Nearly helpless against the wind Skipper watched as a small river lined
with trees passed beneath, his heels brushing through the topmost
leaves. Between the few extra seconds it took to check the rear of the
aircraft and this darn wind, he was in a heck of a situation. He
remembered thinking there was no telling how long it might take for
anyone to find him if he got hurt.
Looking down again he could see nothing. A ground fog had rolled into
this area and the thin sliver of a new moon long ago gave up its battle
with the dark, overcast night. Skipper pulled the tabs freeing his
rucksack, allowing it to fall to the end of the "drop line" attached to
his parachute harness. He could now land without its extra weight
strapped across his thighs. Then he prepared to hit the ground --
wherever that was.
Behind the shelter of the trees he'd almost hit the wind was mostly
blocked, and Skipper dropped almost straight down. He couldn't tell it,
though; the sensation of dropping through space, combined with almost
total loss of visual reference due to the darkness and the fog, had left
him in a sort of sensory deprivation. What little sound there was, was
muted. No tactile sensation except chill, and nothing but blackness upon
which to focus his eyes. Skipper felt as though he'd been transported
into an eerie state of nonexistence.
He felt and heard his rucksack hit and braced himself for his own impact
-- and was jolted by a loud "crack!" as the ground gave way beneath him.
Falling again, this time accompanied by chunks of sod and pieces of
rotting wood, Skipper heard a tearing sound as the chute above him
caught on a protrusion, slamming him up against the earth and rock sides
of a shaft reaching down into the blackness somewhere below.
His heart was pounding. It was cold, but he felt icy sweat forming on
his forehead under his helmet and running down his spine. Where in hell
was he? Or...was this hell? Reaching out with his hands he felt the dank
walls of the shaft close in around him. The same fear he'd felt while
crawling though tunnels in Central America, searching out drug smugglers
caught him. For a moment he thought he could even smell their sweat. The
flashback faded and he reached for his flashlight and snapped it on.
Far below Skipper could make out a rusty old mine cart and other ancient
mining equipment. A set of rusty, narrow-gauge rails led out of sight to
one side indicating the main tunnel went that way. Looking up into the
still falling dust and debris he could see nothing past the folds of his
canopy and tangled shroud lines. Running up and down the shaft were the
remains of a worm-eaten ladder. He grabbed at a rung, only to have it
come off in his hand.
Looking down again Skipper could see his rucksack still dangling at the
end of its drop line. Pulling it up, he removed his 120-foot coil of
rope and tied it off to his harness. Then he unbuckled the harness and
lowered himself down the rope into the mine. At the bottom of the shaft
he only had five feet of rope left, which meant the shaft was well over
130 feet deep. A few moments spent looking around wouldn't make much
difference in rejoining his team, and Skipper sensed something
providential in landing here.
It was evident that no one had been in the mine for many, many years.
What equipment there was to be found had long since rusted beyond
usefulness. About thirty feet down the tunnel Skipper kicked a rotting
wooden crate. The slats of the crate fell away, revealing twenty dusty
bars of roughly cast gold. The bars seemed to glow and shimmer in the
beam of his flashlight as tiny particles of dust drifted slowly downward
through the cobwebs of the tunnel. Skipper stood there as if rooted to
the spot for several seconds, then shook himself violently as though
trying to clear his own cobwebs from his mind. Reaching down he
carefully picked up one of the bars. It felt warm and velvety to his
touch. At the same time it was heavy, cold and hard. "How very odd." he
said out loud.
The bars later weighed in within an ounce of the same weight -- just
over forty pounds each. Skipper wasn't sure whether he could claim what
he'd found, or even if it'd still be there when he could come back for
it, but he'd try.
The climb back out was more than 110 feet just to get back to his
parachute harness, then at least twenty feet more up the shroud lines.
He had been unable to see further up the shaft than that. Skipper pulled
the heavy nylon laces out of his boots and tied one end of each to the
rope with a taut-line hitch that would only slide up the rope (and not
back down when his weight was applied to it), then tied loops in the
other ends. Placing one foot in the loop and putting his weight on it,
the hitch tightened on the rope, supporting him. Sliding the other hitch
up the rope, then placing his weight in that loop, it bit in and he
forced himself upward, repeating the process over and over, moving up
the rope about a foot at a time. Climbing in total darkness he had only
the chill of the dank earth around him and the occasional sounds of his
parachute canopy tearing to accompany him. When he'd counted a hundred
"steps" up the rope he knew it was about that far back down to the rusty
mine cart below him. "Oh, please don't come loose now," he whispered to
the parachute stretched above him.
With a loud ripping sound the rope he was climbing went slack, and
Skipper began to fall. A sudden pang of intense fear stabbed through him
and in a millisecond pictures of himself lying at the bottom of the mine
with a broken back flashed in his head. Almost as quickly the rope
snapped tight and Skipper's grip was broken. He fell again and was
jerked to a stop by a what felt like a hot wire being forced through the
back of his knee.
Skipper swung slowly back and forth upside down, with more rocks, dirt
clods and dust pelting him from above. Unable to stand the searing pain
in his knee he grabbed for the rope and pulled himself upright, then
found the loop with his other foot. It held, and he was able to relieve
the pain around his knee. When his canopy had partially torn away
Skipper's foot had slipped through the loop as he fell. It was this that
had prevented him from plummeting more than 100 feet to certain death.
Carefully extracting his leg from the noose he could tell that the skin
around the back of his right knee had been torn into, but he couldn't
tell how badly. Skipper flexed the knee, then placed his foot back in
the loop and continued to climb. When he reached the harness he was
nearly exhausted and was tempted to buckle in and rest. He dared not,
for he didn't know how much longer the parachute would hold before it,
and he, went crashing into the darkness below. Hand over hand he
continued to climb, with every muscle now crying out in pain. Fighting
his way through the folds of the camouflaged nylon he found himself at
the edge of the pit and with one last heave, rolled out onto the grass.
He lay there gasping for breath and then the pain in his knee forced him
into movement. Inspecting the wound he found that although the skin had
been broken and peeled back about two inches (requiring his A-Team medic
to put in about twenty stitches when he got back to the drop zone), he
wasn't injured much worse than painful bruising. He tied a triangular
bandage around the knee and pulled up the parachute, his rifle, pack and
rope. Then he moved the parachute to a location about a quarter of a
mile away, concealed the shaft entrance and limped on to rejoin his
team. He would take leave next month and return.
* *
The month following that jump Skipper spent two weeks
researching the property and everything pertaining to it. Finding no
current mining or other mineral claims on the property he bought it for
its land value from an absentee owner who had never set eyes on it, then
filled two large safe-deposit boxes with more than $5,000,000 in fine
gold ingots. He would never learn the name of his long ago benefactor,
but he thought he knew.
Captain Mason resigned his commission in the Army; and, since that day,
he'd turned that sum into much, much more.
Skipper smiled at the memories and put his arm around Patti.
"Thanks, Dutchman." Skipper said to himself.