The Intruders Read Online Free PDF

twenty-two
or -three. His left hand was a hook sticking out of his sleeve. The
interrogator was older, pushing thirty, bigger, and stood waiting for
the bartender to draw him a beer.
    “Yeah,” the kid said. “Near Chu Lai.”
    “Serves you right,” the older man said as he tossed his money on the bar
and picked up his beer. He turned away.
    Jake Grafton was off his stool and moving without conscious thought. He
laid a heavy hand on the man’s shoulder and spun him around. Beer
slopped from the man’s mug.
    “You sonuvabitch!” the man roared. “What do you think you’re doing?”
    “You owe this guy an apology.”
    “My ass!” Then the look on Grafton’s face sank in. “Now hold on, you
bastard! I’ve got a black belt That was all he managed to get out,
because Jake seized a beer bottle sitting on the bar and smashed it
against the man’s head with a sweeping backhand. The big man went to
the floor, stunned.
    Grafton grabbed wet, bloody hair with his right hand and lifted. He
grabbed a handful of balls with his left and brought the man to his
feet, then started him sideways. With a heave he threw him through the
plate-glass window onto the concourse.
    As the glass tinkled down Jake walked out the door of the bar and
approached the man. He lay stunned, surrounded by glass fragments. The
glass grated under Jake’s shoes.
    Jake squatted.
    The man was semiconscious, bleeding from numerous small cuts. His eyes
swam, then focused on Grafton.
    “You got off lucky this time. I personally know a dozen men who would
have killed you for that crack you made in there. There’s probably
thousands of them.”
    Slivers of glass stuck out of the man’s face in several places.
    “If I were you I’d give up karate. You aren’t anywhere near tough
enough. Maybe you oughta try ballet.”
    He stood and walked back into the bar, ignoring the gaping onlookers.
The ex-soldier was still sitting on the stool.
    “How much for the beers?” Jake asked the bartender.
    “yours?”
    “Mine and this gentleman’s. I’m buying his too.”
    “Four bucks.”
    Jake tossed a five-spot on the bar. Through the nowempty frame of the
window he saw a policeman bending over the man lying on the concourse.
    Jake held out his hand to the former soldier, who shook it.
    “You didn’t have to do that.”
    “Yeah I did,” Jake said. “I owed it to myself.”
    The bartender held out his hand. “I was in the Army for a couple years.
I’d like to shake your hand too.”
    Jake shook it.
    “Well,” he said to the one-handed veteran, who was looking at his hook,
“don’t let the assholes grind you down.”
    “He isn’t the only one,” the man murmured, nodding toward the concourse.
    “I know. We got a fucking Eden here, don’t we?”
    He left the bar and introduced himself to the first cop he saw.
    It was about four o’clock on Monday afternoon when a police officer
opened the cell door.
    “You’re leaving, Grafton. Come on.”
    The officer walked behind Jake, who was decked out in. a blue jump suit
that all prisoners wore several sizes too big. He had been in the can
all weekend. He had used his one telephone call when he was arrested on
Saturday to call the squadron duty officer at NAS Whidbey.
    ,You,re where?” that worthy had demanded, apparently unable to believe
his own ears. -The King County Jail,” Jake repeated.
    “I’ll be damned! What’d you do, kill somebody?”
    “Naw. Threw a guy out of a bar.”
    “That’s all?”
    “He went out through a plate glass window.”
    “Oh.”
    “Better put it in the logbook and call the skipper at home.”
    “Okay, Jake. Don’t bend over to pick up the soap.”
    This afternoon he got into his civilian clothes in the same room in
which he had undressed, the same room, incidentally, in which he had
been fingerprinted and photographed.
    when he was dressed an officer passed him an envelope that contained the
items from his pockets.
    Jake examined the contents of the envelope. His