The Naked Jungle Read online

  The

  Naked

  Jungle

  HARRY WHITTINGTON

  a division of F+W Media, Inc.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Also Available

  Copyright

  ONE

  ALL NIGHT LONG he thought about the girl lying beside him in the raft. It was better than thinking about her husband on the other side of him or the endless expanse of the Pacific. But whether it was better or not, he thought about her. He had been doing that since the first time he saw her. Once he prayed that rain would fall so that he could catch water for her to drink. That prayer wasn’t answered, either.

  A slender, smooth-muscled man in his early thirties, Webb fingered his stubbled jaw and wondered why he should be so acutely aware of her. The sudden swell of waves rolled her toward him under the tarpaulin, and her knee banged his leg. But it wasn’t only her nearness that drove everything else from his mind. He remembered the first time he’d seen her when they boarded the Trans-Asia Constellation at Honolulu. He’d been high, but something about her had reached through the fuzziness in his brain. And he’d thought, God, how beautiful; a man could go through hell for that. And then he’d thought with alcoholic clarity: probably, she’d see that I did.

  The next time he’d noticed her? On the plane — in the ten minutes before the crash.

  He’d gone to sleep the moment after take-off. Maybe he’d dreamed about her, it seemed he had — something about the way she’d look on his island.

  The instant the far engine on the Constellation’s right wing misfired, he came awake abruptly from fevered sleep. He strained, waiting, not breathing, listening. The engine caught again and he told himself it was all right and he should feel good. But it wasn’t all right and he didn’t feel good.

  Suddenly sober, he lay tense in his aisle seat. The plane side-slipped and he caught himself, digging fingers into the seat rest.

  The stewardess paused beside him. Her face was gray. “All right, Mr. Millar?” Nobody would read panic in her voice. They had trained her voice.

  “Could I have some orange juice, please?” his tone matched hers.

  “Of course.” Her smile didn’t alter.

  He wiped the sweat off his forehead. “What’s the matter with the air-conditioning?”

  She hesitated only the flash of a second, but it was enough. Her smile stretched thinner. “I’ll get your orange juice.”

  He hadn’t watched her walk away. He was aware the plane listed badly to the right and he was braced against the seat and had been for God knew how long. His fingers ached on the arm rest, the pain in his shoulder was like the chill of paralysis.

  He listened for something to happen out on that right wing. Voices pounded against his consciousness. “I’ll look you up in Sydney.” A man’s voice suddenly loud. From behind him a woman laughed.

  Webb sat forward. These people didn’t even suspect what was happening. The stewardess spoke quietly with one of the pilots near the rear hatch. There was nothing about her to suggest the expanding pressure of panic. Nothing, unless you noticed the way she held Webb’s cup of orange juice, her fingers tightening on the paper cup, crumpling it so the juice spilled.

  Then this girl flashed into his vision and into his thoughts again. She was directly across the aisle, and the first thing he noticed was her anger; she was swollen with suppressed rage and in a moment she was going to burst. Her husband’s strident tenor struck at Webb. She tried to interrupt, but he wouldn’t let her. She spoke very softly but the words carried to Webb clearly: “In the morning at Sydney, Alfred, I’m leaving you.”

  Webb looked at her, thinking it was a dead heat as to which would fly apart first, she or the plane. It was hell to think about her and plane crash in the same breath. Such a waste. She had a tender kind of beauty that made you ache looking at it. Dark blonde hair gleaming rich and lustrous. Her mouth was large with full underlip; her face was slender, high-planed.

  He laid his head back, lifted his wrist and checked his watch. It was two A.M. That meant they were five hours southwest of Hawaii.

  He put the lovely girl from his mind. A slight smile twisted his lips. Funny, they were going to crash when he’d almost made his dream come true. It was the way of his life, get something right in his grasp and have it snatched away.

  His dream was something he couldn’t tell anybody about. But it was real. Since he’d left the Navy he’d been insurance salesman, radio announcer, insurance adjuster, but whatever he was he’d needed that dream to sustain him. It was freedom, that was what it was. It was his dream about an island, any one of the infinite specks they called islands in the South Pacific, coconut palms rustling with the slightest breeze in from the ocean; hibiscus, the blood red kind, and orchids, as huge as both your hands, in the jungles; lagoons clear and cold and blue. And there would be nights with the moon looking bigger than the island itself.

  He tightened his elbow on the seat rest. Sometimes that dream had been all he had. He’d thought he had Dorothy, but that had been for laughs — only not the kind of laughs you shared. But even when she was gone and the marriage was ended, he couldn’t forget her. Sometimes he looked up and thought he saw her ahead of him in the street. He remembered the soft up-swell of her breasts, the tilted way she held her head.

  He squinted his eyes shut, trying to blot out the pictures of her. But now that it had started, he’d go through it all: the jobs he’d lost, the towns he’d lived in, the cheap restaurants where he’d eaten, the boardinghouse beds in which he’d lain and dreamed about the freedom — the kind of dreams everyman has but never expects to come true.

  He sniffed and smelled the faint trace of smoke. He sat up and looked around. No one else had noticed. The girl across the aisle was staring into the middle distance, lost in contemplation of her own unhappiness. The stewardess had forgotten his orange juice; she had dropped the crumpled cup somewhere.

  He glanced at the thin blond man with the lovely wife. She’s leaving you, Alfred. But not in Sydney, not tomorrow.

  There was abruptly a change in the sound of the motors, a difference in the vibration. The whole plane shuddered and then from the right there was silence. The Constellation dropped fifty feet as though in an air pocket, but there was no air pocket. They were listing, veering heavily on the silent right wing. The plane took another erratic dive.

  Somebody said, “Wow! This weather’s rough.”

  The lights blinked out from bow to stern. They were gone only a moment, a silent breathless moment in eternity, and then they flashed on again. But in that moment everything in that plane had changed.

  Webb remembered thinking: Funny about the moon — the way it comes up over those islands. Bigger than the sun and close enough to touch.

  The girl behind Webb laughed again. But now her laugh was high pitched and it cut off, right in the middle.

  TWO

  WEBB SQUINTED his gray eyes as the sun appeared suddenly, metallic white and furnace hot. He moved his tongue across his salt-caked lips. He was hungry and thirsty, and wished he could forget it. He looked at the girl and hoped she would sleep. The longer she slept, the better she’d
stand the heat and the thirst.

  On the other side of Webb, Alfred Krayer sat up and stretched his thin arms and yawned. Krayer had been sleeping for what Webb supposed was the last four hours. It seemed twenty hours. The loneliness and silence of a drifting raft made time move slowly. Krayer had come awake suddenly, as though a mental alarm clock had gone off in his head.

  “All right, Millar.” Krayer’s voice was sharp and clipped in the morning stillness. “You can get some sleep now.” Krayer’s voice woke his wife. Webb watched her stir. She fretting and licking at her lips with her tongue. Her fair skin was fiery, showing the severe sunburn she’d picked up yesterday. He breathed deeply, glancing at the white sun-streak on the water. It was going to be worse today.

  She didn’t sit up. She only raised her head a little, pushing her dark blonde hair out of her face. You look like you belong in an Italian movie, Webb thought.

  She let her brown eyes pause, resting on Webb a moment. She tried to smile but her eyes were slightly feverish.

  “You got a peach of a sunburn yesterday,” she said, her voice tired.

  “You look like a broiled lobster yourself.”

  “How can you speak of food?” The faint smile touched at her lips.

  Webb could guess at the thoughts behind her meaningless words, the fear and the terror and the hopelessness. They floated in a circular raft a million miles from anything she’d ever known. She might have been hysterical or stunned or agonized — all the things he himself was inside. But she tried to smile at him, even though she couldn’t quite make it.

  He shaded his eyes from the glare of the sun and looked at her. No, he’d never known anyone remotely like her. He remembered the miracle that had put them together in this raft, even if the same ironic joker had tossed in her husband. Two people looking for freedom. She thought she could find hers in Sydney, and he sought his on a coral island somewhere.

  Webb was convinced fate or some god had meant for them to come together. It had to be. Thinking back over the plane crash, he couldn’t add it up any other way. It would have been too easy to have missed altogether, back there on the plane.

  She’d been out of his mind in the few minutes before the crash. He remembered the way that girl’s high-pitched laugh hung in the silent chamber of the plane.

  The stewardess moved through the aisle. People spoke to her, snagged at her arm as she passed, but they missed and she didn’t seem to hear them. Her cap sat rakish on her curls, the fine muscles undulated in her hips, but she moved fast and nobody could stop her.

  She reached the doorway to the pilot’s compartment, touched the handle and turned it. Webb watched her shoulders straighten, her head go up. She turned, smiling with her gray face, and swallowed before she spoke.

  “I’m sure everything is all right. If everyone will please keep his seat. We’ve hit a little rough weather and I’m sure we’ll ride out of it in a moment.”

  Alfred Krayer stood up, holding the top of the seat ahead. “Young woman, I — ”

  The stewardess looked right at Krayer and didn’t see him. She turned her back, opened the door, stepped through and closed it behind her.

  The plane shook and lurched. Krayer staggered and fell hard against Webb. Webb caught him in the small of the back, supporting him until he gained his balance and the plane leveled.

  “Beg your pardon.”

  “It’s all right,” Webb said.

  “Rough weather.”

  “Engine trouble.”

  “Oh?” Krayer tilted a blond brow at Webb and looked him over. “Are you sure?”

  His tone angered Webb. “Yes, I’m sure. It started ten minutes ago. I was sure then.”

  The plane dipped again: a bird with a broken wing. Webb watched Alfred clutch at the seats. “You better sit down.”

  “I’m quite able to take care of myself, thank you.”

  Webb turned away and Krayer sat down. He leaned across the aisle and tapped Webb’s arm. “Beg your pardon, but unless you’re an expert, you shouldn’t venture an opinion — especially where it might create panic.”

  His wife had caught his arm. “Alfred, stop.”

  Webb shrugged, pulling his gaze from the closed door of the pilot’s compartment. “It’s all right.” He spoke beyond Alfred to her harried brown eyes. “If he says it’s rough weather, it’s rough. Really rough.” He moved his gaze across Alfred’s face thinking, you won’t make me waste my energy hating you, brother.

  The pilot’s signal flared red, blinked off, flared again: Fasten safety belts.

  The compartment door opened. The stewardess came out first. She looked more composed; she’d spent a minute powdering her nose. Behind her came the navigator, smiling but not looking up. The co-pilot followed, tall slender man with cap back on his tawny hair.

  “If you people will fasten your safety belts, please. Little engine trouble. Under your seats in envelopes, you’ll find safety vests. Please get them out.”

  Webb fastened his safety belt, found the packaged life vest, heard the other passengers stirring.

  The stewardess, navigator and co-pilot raked kapok life vests from a compartment. A babble of chatter broke out, then died.

  The co-pilot held up one of the life vests. He said loudly to the stewardess: “Seems a sin to wrap you up in one of these things.” While he had the passenger’s attention, he said, “There are fifty-five of these vests aboard, nothing to worry about. There are three twenty-man life rafts that may be ejected from the top of the plane in case of a crash, another raft there in the forward coat compartment, and a utility raft in the pilot’s compartment. For the moment, we have only the vests to think about. Lace them on carefully. If you need help, call any of the three of us. When you get them on, please stay in your seat. This is simply precaution, nothing else.”

  Webb slipped his arms through the supports and began to clamp the vest closed over his chest.

  A woman said loudly, “What time do you think we’ll be in Sydney, pilot?”

  “I don’t know, m’am. Get your life jacket on, quick as possible, will you?”

  “Well, I just want to know what time we’ll get in Sydney. After all, my son is meeting me. At the airport. He’ll have to know what time we’re going to arrive.”

  “Yes, m’am.”

  “How’s he going to know if you don’t know.”

  “He can find out from the dispatcher, m’am. Right there in Sydney.”

  “Well, why don’t you know?”

  The warning light blinked steadily now. After the first few moments, Webb felt no more panic, felt nothing but fatigue laced with bitterness.

  He’d tried so damned hard to be free. He glanced at the girl who was looking forward to Sydney.

  The plane faltered, dipped harder than ever to the right. The pilot tried to level it out but it was too late. The tip of the right wing struck something on the leading edge. Something. The shudder shook the whole plane. Webb knew they’d struck a wave. He hoped to God it was the top of a wave. From the way the plane staggered under the impact, he didn’t hope for much.

  They were in the water — not on it but crashing through it, like a crashboat thrusting into the swells. But the water was solid and the plane was fragile. A rising swell caught the tilted right wing and shoved the whole plane around.

  The jolting hammering crash-landing rolled the plane, ripping the fabric, splintering the supports and twisting the metal. The sound was overwhelming, roaring tearing noises mixed with the rending of metal and the thunder of impact.

  The lights flickered, went out. The darkness was the black of a cave belly. There were no comforting, reassuring sounds of four engines now. There was only the pound of the waves and the wail of the wind. It was an empty sound, the sort of sound you’d expect to hear when you stood at the brink of the earth just before you stepped out into eternity.

  THREE

  HOW NEARLY he’d missed her after the crash there on the plane….

  The navigator and c
o-pilot flashed on large electric torches that lighted the plane in a shadowy way. The stewardess had been thrown against a bulkhead. She lay still, lips moving as though she were whispering something into the torn fabric.

  The co-pilot and navigator were too busy to help her. The co-pilot talked as he raked gear from the compartment below the sky room. “You people do what I tell you. Don’t listen to anybody but me. You’ll be all right. You listen to me.” He held up a bundled pneumatic life raft. “As I told you, three of these twenty-man deals will be ejected from the top of the plane. You’re going to be all right if you just do what I tell you. I’m just as anxious to get out of this fix as you are.”

  The co-pilot secured a line about the waist of the navigator. He knotted the long thick hemp, tested it twice. “That’ll hold,” he said. He jerked his head around. “Now listen to me, you people. You all got your kapok vests secured? Tie that dangling drawstring round through your crotch and knot it in front.”

  A girl cried out. “The ladies, too?”

  “Ladies especially,” the co-pilot said. “We’re about ready for the women to go over the side. Now keep your nerve, secure that drawstring and do what I tell you. You got nothing to worry about except getting a little wet.”

  The pilot’s compartment door opened slowly and the pilot staggered through it. There was a wide gash across his head from crown to left jaw. His face was bloody and blood dripped to his leather jacket. He carried the bundled life raft from his compartment.

  He slumped against the bulkhead, panting, seeing something nobody else saw. He dropped the packaged utility raft. His voice rasped in his throat. “Damn thing no good. Defective! Tripped trigger — only nothing happened.”

  The co-pilot was working at the rear hatch. He turned. “Did you eject the three rafts?”

  The pilot lifted his head. “Get these people out. Release lever jammed. Can’t get those rafts loose. You got one raft — no time. Three more minutes we won’t get out.”

  He tried to straighten, stood a moment with both hands against his face as though to stop the bleeding. Then his knees crumpled and he slid down the door facing.