Still Missing
The friendship between Biff and Chuba developed rapidly. Chuba was an
odd boy, with his mixed-up jive talk, his quick Oriental mind, and his
desperate anxiety to be “like American kid.” He was half a head shorter
than Biff. He had long, black, wiry hair, usually plastered down with
smelly hair tonics. These he got from Muscles. The burly mechanic tried
every new hair conditioner that came along, in an attempt to control his
unruly light brown hair. Chuba’s skin was dark, so deeply tanned that
its yellowish tinge from his Chinese blood hardly showed. He looked more
Burmese than Chinese.
His daily clothes were a pair of hand-me-down brown shorts and hand-made
sandals, ideal for the heavy, humid weather which turned the
jungle-enclosed camp into a smoking oven. The shorts Chuba got from the
Americans in the camp. Chuba did his own alterations on the shorts to
cut them down to his size. He was far from an expert tailor. One pair
had the left leg six inches longer than the right. Another pair, handed
down from a man with a forty-four-inch waist, gave Chuba a laughable
balloon effect in the rear, particularly when he ran.
Biff’s second day at the camp in Unhao began with a visit to the
communications room. Mike Dawson, the radio operator, merely shook his
head at the question written on Biff’s face.
No word from Uncle Charlie.
Biff hurried through breakfast. He left Headquarters House, stepping
into a blazing sun already sending heat waves up from the brown dirt
surface of the camp.
Chuba was waiting just outside the entrance to headquarters.
“I hurry up this morning. Help my father. Now I can show you rest of
camp.” Chuba’s father was in charge of the servants in the camp. “My
father Number One Boss here,” Chuba told Biff proudly.
The boys roamed around for more than an hour. Chuba chattered on as fast
as any of the monkeys scampering about the trees which fringed the camp.
“Are there elephants around here?” Biff asked. “Yesterday morning I
thought I saw one out of my bedroom window.”
“Sure. Sure. Much elephants. Wild ones.” Chuba grinned. “But one you saw
must be Suzie. She dig it here big. That means likes it here,” Chuba
explained. Biff smiled to himself. “When they clear jungle to make the
camp, many elephants used to push over trees, and pull them away. When
job is done, Suzie and Tiny, that’s the other elephant, they won’t
leave. So—who can make an elephant go when he no want to? They stay on.”
“Where did you pick up all this jive talk, Chuba?” Biff asked.
“Jive talk? You mean talk like American boys?”
“They don’t all talk that way. Jive talk is American slang. Some boys
use it more than others.”
“I learn it from Muscles. He has many magazines come to him by the mail
from United States. Many books of the comics, too. You like to meet up
with Muscles? He come back from Rangoon early this morning.”
“I sure would,” Biff said.
There was no mistaking Muscles. Biff spotted him as soon as they entered
the hangar. The plane maintenance mechanic, wearing only shorts, shoes,
and a long white mechanic’s coat, towered over the small natives whom he
was directing. Big was the word for Muscles. Biff could only compare him
with some of the giant linesmen he had seen play for the Chicago Bears
professional football team. He and his father went to the games in
Chicago every now and then.
As the boys approached the plane Muscles was working on, they saw the
powerful man heave an oil drum off the floor as if it were made of
tissue paper. The drum could have weighed anywhere from one hundred to
three hundred pounds. He up-ended the drum, and a heavy stream of thick
oil flowed smoothly to the intake pipe. Muscles held the drum steadily
for a couple of minutes.
“That ought to do it,” he said, and put the drum back on the floor. He
looked at the boys.
“Well, now, if it isn’t my young friend and Number One boy Chuba. Hey,
did you have a visitor yesterday morning?” A big grin cracked across
Muscles’ face. It was clear that Muscles had a great liking for the
Chinese boy.
“Friend? No friend,” Chuba replied. He didn’t want Muscles to think he
had been frightened by what Chuba now called his Evil Spirit Box. “I
find evil spirits in my room. They make with strange noises, like wild
animals howling.”
“Yeah?” Muscles was all interest. “So what gave? Did the evil spirits
send you?”
“I send them. I take evil spirit’s hand, shake it good, and evil
spirit’s howl become purr of pussycat.”
“Didn’t scare you? Gosh, and that thing cost me twenty bucks to have it
sent out from the States.” Muscles was disappointed. Biff grinned. Chuba
had carried the thing off well. He wasn’t going to give Muscles the
satisfaction of knowing how really frightened he had been.
“And you must be Biff Brewster.” Muscles turned away from Chuba.
“Charlie Keene’s nephew.”
“You’re right the first time, Muscles. I’ve sure heard a lot about you.
Particularly from Chuba.”
“I’m going to make an American kid out of that rascal, no matter what.
Say, I’m awfully sorry about your uncle.” He paused, as he saw a worried
look come over Biff’s face. Then he hurried on rapidly. “But don’t
worry. Charlie Keene can take care of himself. He always has. I was with
him in Korea, and I know. He’ll get back. If he doesn’t, we’ll go in and
get him.”
Going into Red China to hunt for his uncle had been a thought growing
more and more prominent in Biff’s mind. If no word came from Uncle
Charlie soon, Biff knew that he couldn’t just sit around and wait any
longer. He’d have to do something.
After a few more minutes of talk with Muscles, Biff and Chuba left the
hangar. Biff was silent as they walked across the hot field to the shade
of a small coconut palm grove. Chuba kept rattling on, but his words
just bounced off Biff’s ears. Biff seated himself against the leaning
trunk of a palm.
“Sit down a minute, Chuba. I want to ask you some questions.”
“Shoots. Chuba will make with the answers.”
Biff frowned. “Tell me, just how tough would it be to slip across the
border into China?”
“For Chuba, easy. Very easy. I do it many times.”
“How about me? Think I could get across?”
“Not by yourself. But with Chuba for Number One guide—” The native boy
shrugged his shoulders. “I know all trails. I know just where Red border
patrol guards strong, and where they guard weak. Afraid to guard some
places.”
“Why is that?”
“Wild animals. Black bears—fierce, big, kill a man with one big swipe
with paw. Also tigers and leopards. Snakes, too. All kinds. They hang
from trees. Big python slide off tree, wrap around man’s neck and—urgle
gurgle—” Chuba made a rattling noise in his throat. “No more man.”
Biff swallowed hard. “And you go over the border in a place where all
the wild animals are?”
“Sure,” Chuba boasted. “Chuba smell and see animals before they see
Chuba. Is safer to go into China that way.”
“That way? Safer? What do you mean?”
“Red patrol stays close to main road. Sometimes they let kids like me
through. But, if they angry, or their Big Boss chew ’em out, then they
don’t care whether you kid or not. They shoot you or catch you and make
you work like slave. Once you in slave labor camp, you never come back.”
Biff was silent.
“You think maybe you like to go in find your Uncle Charlie. Put snatch
on him from Red baddies?”
“Something like that, Chuba. Think we could do it?”
Chuba didn’t answer too quickly. His thin face was screwed up in
thought. “Be most rough. But we smart. Most patrol dumb. Maybe all go
well—maybe not—”
Biff didn’t want to hear any more. His mind was made up. If they had a
fifty-fifty chance of finding Uncle Charlie, then that was all he
wanted.
“Meet me back here in an hour, Chuba. I want to talk to Sahib Jack.”
Biff found Jack Hudson in the communications center, pouring over a
large map of China. Biff moved to his side.
“Trying to figure out where Charlie might be,” Jack said. He pointed to
a position on the map.
“Now if you drew a line from Chungking to Chengtu, I’d say he was
somewhere west of that line.”
Biff leaned closer. “Why do you think he’s in that area?” he asked.
“Well, I do remember Charlie’s mentioning a small place called
Jaraminka. About two, maybe three weeks ago. He’d just received a letter
from his friend, Ling Tang, back in the States. Right after that, he
went into Rangoon for a few days. I do know that there’s a village by
that name somewhere in that area.”
“Rough country?” Biff asked.
“In spots. It’s north of the Yunnan plateau. In the foothills of Mt.
Minya Konka. And some of those foothills would be called mountains back
where you come from.” Jack smiled.
“Anything else to go on?” Biff wanted to know.
“Well, we do know how much gas Charlie was carrying. Enough for about
1,200 miles. He’d have to allow for a safety margin. As I told you, I
figure he planned on about 500 miles in, and 500 back, of course. That
would give him a 200-mile safety factor.”
Jack leaned back against the map table, scratched his head, and lit a
cigarette.
“Another thing ... that radio signal we got.”
“You mean the one yesterday?”
“Yes. Now if that was your uncle calling....”
“You’re still not sure it was Uncle Charlie?”
“Well, I guess I am. Let’s say it was. That’s another reason I figure
he’s over toward the mountain range.”
“I’m not reading you too clearly right now,” Biff said.
Jack laughed. “I’ll try to explain. Charlie had a portable radio
transmitter with him. A good one, battery operated. Its maximum range
would be about 500 miles under ideal conditions. That means he’d have to
have straight-line transmission.”
“You mean nothing in the way, like a high mountain?”
“That’s right, Biff. Transmission is greatly reduced if your wave has to
bend over hills or mountains.”
“So you figure he’s got to be high enough to shoot a straight wave
directly to Unhao.”
Jack nodded his head. “And the elevation around Jaraminka really fills
that bill—5,000 to 6,000 feet.”
“How could he ever land in such rugged terrain?” Biff asked.
“Plenty of small plateaus. Some of them have been cleared for farming.”
Biff picked up a drawing compass. He adjusted its opening to fit the
five-hundred-mile mark on the scale of miles at the bottom of the map.
Then, placing the steel point on the dot marking Unhao, he swirled the
compass. The pencil end cut right through the area Jack was describing.
“Nice figuring, Jack.” A faraway look floated across Biff’s face.
“Hey! You’re not getting any ideas, are you?” Jack demanded. “An
American boy could never make it across the border. Natives, sure—but
you—never.”
Maybe not, thought Biff, but in his thoughts, he was already there.