“Spitting cobra,” Abriol said, peering down at the dead snake. “They shoot venom at their prey’s eyes which blinds them immediately. And a neck bite right there, well, that’s where the carotid artery is. That’s always going to be pretty quick. One of Talawan’s scarier snakes, I’m afraid.”
I sat back on my haunches. I didn’t know what to say, or do. Rooster looked as shocked as I was. The lumpish body of the snake was still writhing slowly on the ground, as if in search of its head. It was about four feet long.
“We must go on,” Abriol said. “My men will hide the body, and the wild dogs will take care of the remains. I’m very sorry. Was he religious?”
I stood up, took a deep breath, and said I didn’t know. He wasn’t wearing dog tags. Abriol nodded. The villager who’d shouted the warning came up to Abriol and began apologizing in Tagalog, but Abriol waved him away in a sympathetic fashion with only a few words.
I wanted to ask a hundred questions but decided to save my breath, especially if we were going to take on that looming escarpment in front of us. It had looked to be right in front of us, but two hours later we were still climbing toward the base. I thought I heard Rooster groan quietly as we finally closed in on that sheer black wall. It looked like Abriol was heading directly for another one of those giant boulders, partially buried in deep black sand, but when we reached it he simply walked around it and into a narrow passageway that led right into the rock face.
I glanced up as we made our way into the passage. It looked as if the entire side of the mountain, if that’s what this was, had split apart, leaving a ten-foot-wide crack that went up at a slight angle, with sides that were black and shiny, reminding me of obsidian. The trail curved around to the right and then back to the left for almost 200 yards before we stepped out into a huge bowl-shaped formation, obviously the crater of an extinct volcano. The crater was perhaps a half mile in diameter and perfectly symmetrical, with walls rising at least 500 feet all around. There was a purplish lake at the bottom a hundred feet or so below us, but no vegetation anywhere.
“Welcome to the Tambagi crater,” Abriol said. I was still taking it all in when I got a whiff of sulfur and then felt a warm, wet sensation on my right pants leg. I looked down to discover a tiny fissure in a rock next to my leg that was weeping barely visible steam.
Not extinct, I thought.
Abriol nodded when he saw me work that out. “That lake down there is mostly acid of some kind. My people showed me by taking me down there and throwing a coin in right at the edge. It boiled away in about sixty seconds, so we don’t go down there, okay?”
“You bet,” I said. “So where—”
“Please, follow me,” he said. We turned left and walked along a two-foot-wide ledge for a hundred yards, trying not to look down, until we came to another hole in the crater wall. This one was roundish and maybe 20 feet in diameter. It appeared to be a tunnel of some kind, with walls of more of that shiny black rock. I noticed that our escort of native resistance fighters had melted away once we’d entered the crater. There was now only one older-looking guy taking up the rear of our little column.
“This is an ancient lava tube,” Abriol said, stopping to explain what we were looking at. “It goes all the way through the crater wall to a sheer cliff on the western slopes of the mountain. It’s about four hundred feet long, with a downward curve to it. We’ve made our base here. It’s perfect, because from the air, if any of our campfire smoke escapes, any passing Jap pilot will think it’s the volcano. Their patrols don’t come in here because the locals have told them that there is poison gas in this crater and that the slopes are home to some really bad snakes.”
Tell me about it, I thought. Poor Macklin.
“Is there really poison gas?” I asked as we started single file into the tunnel.
“There probably is a layer of carbon dioxide hanging above that acid pool down there,” he said. “And you’ve seen the snakes firsthand. Are you hungry?”
He grinned when he saw two heads nodding vigorously. We had gone 50 feet when the walls began to vibrate to a deep rumbling noise. It lasted twenty seconds, followed by a fine mist of black dust that seemed to materialize out of nowhere and settled on our clothes in almost microscopic particles. There was a surprising amount of sunlight coming from the entrance, and the motes of lava dust created a momentarily beautiful scene.
“Earthquake,” Abriol observed. “Comes with the territory. You’ll get used to it. The locals tell the story that the last time this volcano let go, their shaman knew it was coming because the daily earthquakes stopped completely for a couple of weeks.”
Suddenly I was exhausted and I could see that Rooster was even more tired than I was. I just wanted to sit down, but our guide insisted we go farther into the lava tube. After a few minutes we could smell something cooking. Finally we walked through what I recognized as crude blackout curtains, a panel of fabric on the left, then one on the right, then one more on the left. We zigzagged through them to discover that the “camp” was really nothing more than a line of bamboo pallets leaning against the tunnel wall, each with a cotton blanket and a tied cylinder of straw for a pillow. Farther on was a makeshift table, some benches, and a stone firepit. A trickle of water wept out of the tunnel wall and headed down the long curving floor. A tin pot intercepted some of the water and there was a dimpled metal cup hanging next to the pot. Two old women were squatting next to the fire, tending some battered pots hanging over a bed of coals. There was a faint movement of air through the tunnel that took away what little smoke there was. At the far end of the space two young girls were sitting, trying not to stare at us.
Dinner turned out to be some kind of mystery-meat stew and rice, served in clay bowls. There were hot peppers in it but it was still wonderful. I made a signal to Rooster to hold back to make sure there would be enough for everybody else but Abriol told us to eat our fill and not worry about it. “They’ll be back tomorrow,” he said. “With another version of that gilly-gilly and maybe even some homemade beer, if we’re lucky.”
He then turned to the sole remaining resistance fighter and spoke to him in a native language. The man nodded, picked up his rifle, and then helped the two women to gather up their stuff. The girls sprang up and helped. One of them got the giggles when Rooster burped. She was very pretty and trying hard not to make eye contact with Rooster, who was too tired to notice. Her mother did, however, causing a rapid departure.
Then it was just the three of us—two American naval aviators, survivors of a submarine sinking, and this odd individual who had set up a resistance cell in a volcano. There were three kerosene lanterns hanging from a pole on the wall. He extinguished two of them and then sat down on one of the mats with his back to the curving tunnel wall.
“Where’d all your soldiers go?” I asked, still sitting on the other side of the primitive bamboo table. Rooster had taken down one of the straw pallets and was busy setting up a bunk.
“They go back to their villages at night,” he replied. “We only come here when something happens and we go out to see. Like rumors of a big explosion in the south channel.”
Somehow he’d managed to light up a pipe. The smell of the tobacco made me hunger for a cigarette. Where the hell did he get tobacco out here in the Philippine Islands, I wondered. The surreal nature of our circumstances made me sigh out loud.
“What?” he asked, as he puffed on that pipe to get it going.
“I am Lieutenant Junior Grade Robert T. Steele, US Navy,” I said. “I am—was—a Navy carrier dive bomber pilot. Rooster—that’s Radioman Second Class Billy Baynes over there—is my gunner and co-pilot. Less than a month ago we had been busy attacking Japanese carriers in the Solomon Islands area with the rest of our squadron. Then my carrier got bombed and eventually sank. The two of us went into the water as our carrier went down. We were eventually picked up by one of our own subs, but then she had to make a long transit under radio silence. Once here she attacked a Jap cruiser, a
nd then we got depth charged for a while. They decided to go around to the other side of the island and chose to go through that strait. Apparently we hit a mine and Rooster, Macklin, the lieutenant who was standing OOD, and I ended up in the water. The lieutenant who was the officer of the deck died on the beach once we got ashore. Macklin you know about.”
“Go on,” he said.
“Well, now I’m sitting here inside a fucking volcano with a Filipino guy who speaks damned good English and who says he’s in charge of a bunch of Filipino natives running some kind of resistance operation against the Japanese army. I’m not complaining, mind you, but I am just a little bit bewildered, Mister Domingo Abriol.”
He laughed quietly. “That’s Father Domingo Abriol,” he announced. “I also happen to be a Catholic priest.”
I shook my head. “Of course you are,” I said. “I think I really need some sleep.”
“Great idea, Lieutenant,” he said, gently. “And for what it’s worth, this really isn’t much of a volcano, as Philippine volcanoes go. The real McCoy is thankfully about twenty miles away. We’ll get everything sorted out in the morning. At least you’re alive, right?”
Man had a point, there, I thought, as I got up to go assemble my bed for the night. Rooster was already asleep.
EIGHTEEN
The next morning we were awakened by the rumble of yet another small earthquake. The sound seemed to echo, as if it ricocheted from one end of the lava tube to the other. Father Abriol was sitting right where I’d left him, already awake. When he saw we were awake he got up, stirred the embers of the fire, and plopped an odd-shaped pot down on the flames. Soon the smell of coffee permeated the tunnel. Coffee in the Philippines, I thought. And tobacco. Boy, did I have a lot to learn.
He showed us to the latrine a hundred feet or so down the tunnel, where the floor cracked open, revealing a seemingly bottomless chasm. We walked back up to the camp, washed up, re-stowed the pallets, and then we gathered around the firepit, munching on some kind of flatbread he’d produced from a wicker basket and drinking some truly wonderful coffee. I asked about the coffee.
“Been here in the Philippines since the sixteen hundreds,” he said. “Spanish friars brought it in from Mexico. Most of it’s grown up in the highlands of Luzon to the north. There’s one tiny plantation on the slopes of that smoking volcano you saw. We Filipinos are addicted to it, especially in Manila.”
“I can see why,” I said. “I thought Navy coffee was good, but this…”
He nodded, obviously pleased that we approved. Then he grew serious. “From what you told me, the Navy doesn’t know what happened to your submarine or even the fact that you are alive, correct?”
“We weren’t privy to what messages were being sent or received when we were on the boat. They said they reported picking us up but never got an answer back as to what to do with us, as I remember. We were mostly trying to not be a burden.”
“I’m asking because there’s a radio down in one of the villages. I think we need to tell Manila about you. Maybe they can send another submarine to pick you up.”
The expression on Rooster’s face revealed exactly what he thought about getting on another submarine. He quickly steered the conversation away from that really bad idea. “What kind of radio?” he asked.
“It’s a radio, that’s all I know,” Father Abriol replied. “Uses a telegraph key. It runs on a hand-cranked generator and I’m the designated operator since I’ve begun learning Morse code. We get our instructions from the resistance headquarters near Manila once a week. In turn, if I have something to report, I do it precisely at one in the morning. I report as to what Japanese ships are here or whenever anything changes. They told us to move the radio immediately to another village every time I use it.”
“And what are your instructions, Father Abriol?” I asked.
“There’s only one deep-water anchorage on Talawan Island,” he replied. “The Japs landed earlier this year and went to work on making Orotai, which is not much more than a large fishing village, some kind of temporary base. Right now, my orders are to report any Japanese shipping that comes here, especially warships.
“When the Japs first arrived they built a walled compound down near the fishing boat pier in the town. They rounded up every able-bodied man they could find in the town, disassembled some of the town’s buildings for materials, and created their fort. The garrison isn’t large—perhaps two hundred fifty or so. They have barracks, gun towers, and some warehouses, all surrounded by a twelve-foot-high wall.”
“Not much of a garrison,” I said.
He shrugged. “There’s more: three months after they arrived, they began building another compound across the river from Orotai. We thought it was to be a second fort for the army troops who’d landed, but then we found out it was going to be a prisoner-of-war camp. A month later a transport arrived and they boated in about two hundred or so British prisoners from their Malaya campaign.”
“Wow,” was all I could muster.
“By then they’d built a barbed-wire-and-bamboo-log enclosure for the prisoners, and then some barracks for their men and a small house for their commandant, a lieutenant colonel named Tachibana. They then cleared all the land around the enclosure down to bare dirt and mounted machine-gun towers at three corners. They put the word out in the town that anybody coming within sight of the camp wall would be killed. Then they went through the town and the nearby countryside and took all the food. If anyone resisted, they were killed on the spot. They took young women, too.”
“And you reported all this to Manila?”
“I actually went up there in one of the bigger fishing boats we have here,” he said. “When the Japs landed I knew I had to disappear. They’re known to kill priests on sight. I brought the radio back with me, along with a crate of old rifles and some ammunition.”
I thought about that. So if these guys had a radio, it was probably an HF set of some kind. Maybe I could get Rooster to key a message to Manila that the local resistance had two American pilots, and also the news that the Hagfish was no longer with us. I wondered what the resistance up in Manila would do with that news. If they’d sent a hand-cranked radio down here to the boonies, they’d certainly have even better radios near occupied Manila that could get through to the American high command in Australia. Which begged the obvious question: Would the Navy do anything about it? They’d already diverted one submarine to look for us after Santa Cruz—and subsequently lost it. Would they do that again? Or would we need to start learning the local language?
“How many Japs are on this island?” I asked.
“We think about two hundred fifty soldiers, all based in Orotai. They’ve also got one gunboat. They keep an old freighter anchored close off the town which I think provides communications and a secure base, since there’s no electricity in the town.”
“How are they treating the locals?”
“Like the barbaric bastards that they are,” he said with some heat. “Their commandant, Tachibana, is a real monster. Brutal is an insufficient description for him and his officers.”
“Why are they here?” I asked.
“Talawan is a small island, with three tiny villages and then the town of Orotai, which itself is pretty small. Most of this island is uplands like where we are, with lots of volcanic features, impassable terrain, and very little flat ground whatsoever. We don’t know why they chose Talawan, except maybe for that anchorage. Mindanao, that’s the next island up and northwest from Talawan, has a much bigger occupying force and an airfield. And a much bigger armed resistance, too. The prisoner-of-war camp may have been an afterthought. There’s really no port, as such. No docks, piers, warehouses, or rail connections. Just a protected anchorage, for now.”
I remembered the Hagfish’s XO telling us that they suspected that Talawan was a way-station base. They’d anchor a tanker and some supply ships here and then transiting fleet units could come in, refuel, rearm, replenish, and then get back on t
he road to the Solomons. Like that cruiser. I told all this to Father Abriol.
“That makes some sense,” he observed. “You must remember, the Japs are a long way from home. It’s over two thousand miles to Tokyo. Perhaps they’re going to build all of that infrastructure for their navy one day. Oil tanks, food warehouses, ammunition storage, although an airfield would be really tough.”
I remembered what the Marines and Seabees had accomplished on Guadalcanal, using Japanese equipment and works in progress to get Henderson Field up and running. But that ground had been flat, and the Japs had already done the ground preps for an airfield. From what I’d already seen, Abriol was right. There really wasn’t much flat land on this island.
“They’ve rounded up about two hundred men from the town and put them into a forced labor camp,” Abriol continued. “As I said, they also picked up some of the young women from Orotai and any in the villages who hadn’t run for purposes that you can imagine. It wasn’t difficult for me to organize a resistance force after that, let me tell you.”
At that moment, a sweaty and puffing young native came down the tunnel. He gabbled away at Father Abriol for a minute. The priest replied and the young man took off back up the tunnel.
The Nugget Page 16