Apparently the Japs had sent out a patrol to a place where the three paths that led to the three largest villages converged at a large freshwater spring. There they’d laid an ambush in the surrounding jungle, hoping to catch members of the resistance or even the priest himself. A woman had come to the spring to fill two water jars and smelled cigarette smoke, which told her there were Japs lurking in the surrounding bush. She’d pretended not to notice and had walked back to her village where she informed the elders. They sent a runner to the village where Father Abriol was hiding, alerting him to the danger. He and three others had decamped immediately and headed for the crater where we’d done our Neanderthal number. They took a different route than the one we’d taken, which involved crossing a shallow crevasse in an old lava field. He stepped onto an invisible bubble in the lava field and had broken through, falling into a conical-shaped pit that sloped down 20 feet to a pile of sharp rock rubble. It had taken his three-man escort two hours to go find some vines, make a rope and crude harness, and get him out of there.
The whole point of heading for the ash crater was to lead any Jap patrols away from the lava tube, especially if they had dogs with them, but there was no other option after his accident. They’d made a bamboo litter and carried him to the west side slope of our volcano and then summoned help. The villagers had their own form of herbal pain-killers, so he wasn’t hurting as much as he should have been, but he was definitely out of action for a while. He gave us a wan smile when we came into the hidey-hole.
“Nice day for a hike,” he said through cracked lips. “Or so it seemed.”
Another rumbling boom from that distant volcano squeezed our ears. I half-expected our volcano to answer with a sympathetic earthquake. Rooster, ever the claustrophobe, looked uneasy. The lava tube was beginning to remind him of scary times on Hagfish.
“We got the gunboat,” I told him. “Do you think the Japs know what actually happened yet?”
He shrugged and then winced. “The villagers know that it wasn’t an accident, but so far, they’re telling me the Japs haven’t reacted. They hauled in some fishermen for questioning, who told the Japs they’d seen the gunboat, but that it was heading out to sea. After that, they paid no attention. The Japs let them go. Someone reported they’d seen one of those big seaplanes flying around Orotai the next morning and then out over the sea. Other than that, my town sources are all silent. And nervous.”
“I figure they’ll commandeer some fishing boats and go out and take a look,” I said. “See if there’s wreckage, bodies, anything.”
The floor gave a little shudder, producing a fine cloud of dust in the tunnel.
“These goddamned volcanoes talk to each other?” Rooster asked nervously.
“Remember, Talawan is all one big volcano,” Father Abriol said. “With many mouths. That eruption over there is a good thing. It means the entire island isn’t going to be blown into the sky, at least not just yet.”
“Not yet,” Rooster said. “Great. That’s really great news.”
“What’s our next step?” I asked.
“Next I’m going to fall asleep for about twelve hours. After that, it will depend upon the Japs. If the Kawanishi reports an oil slick and they take the gunboat’s disappearance as an accident or perhaps the work of an American submarine, not much will happen. If not, God knows.”
“That’s not exactly what I was asking, Padre,” I said.
“I know,” he said with a painful yawn. “Why don’t you two think of something. I’m going to sleep now.”
He closed his eyes and then his whole body relaxed on the bench. For a moment I thought he’d just died, but then I saw his chest moving. I asked Tomaldo what the woman had given him. He grinned.
“The Moros to the north grow opium on one of the higher inland volcanoes,” he said. “They trade it for our fish sauce. What do you want us to do?”
I realized then that we’d just crossed a very important threshold. The padre was out of action. The Americans were now in charge, especially since we’d lit the fuse on stage two. If only one terrified fisherman told the Japs that they’d seen the gunboat in pursuit of Emilio’s boat, and that’s when shooting started, things here on Talawan would come to a sudden and violent head.
“Can you go into Orotai safely?” I asked him. He nodded.
“I need to know what the Japs are doing, and what rumors are going around.”
He nodded again. “You will not stop, then?”
“We’re not going to stop, Tomaldo,” I replied. “After the gunboat, we must not stop.” He got the message, loud and clear.
He came back just after sunset, while Tini and her grandmother were preparing food. He was really upset.
“What’s happened?” I asked him. He slugged down some water before replying.
“Tachibana ordered his troops to burn all but two fishing boats in the harbor,” he reported. “The boats came back in at the usual time and there were soldiers everywhere. They drove all the Filipinos off with bayonets, took all the catch, and then started setting the boats on fire. Next morning he put his men on those two boats and sent them out for fish—but only for the Japanese. He claimed the fishermen were not telling him the truth about what happened to the gunboat. Two fishermen were bayoneted for objecting and thrown into the bay in front of their families.”
“So he’s figured it out,” Rooster said.
“Maybe,” Tomaldo said. “It may be something else. If it was an accident, then Tachibana is responsible as the commander. An act of the resistance? He is safe from blame. He saves face by punishing the people.”
Face, I thought. I’d heard that expression before, and now I knew why it was important. So: maybe use that concept against Tachibana? I asked where the Japs stored all their food supplies in their compound. He said in two heavily guarded godowns, inside the compound itself. Like everything else in Orotai, it would be built of mostly bamboo, except perhaps for a metal roof.
“I have an idea,” I said. “But it will remove all doubt about what’s happening.”
Tomaldo, still fuming over what had happened, made an impatient gesture. “Tell me,” he said.
“Do you know what a fire arrow is?” I asked him.
He frowned and then his face lit up. “I have heard stories,” he said. “From the old times. When the Moros first came, they invaded by sea. The hunters took the points off their arrows and then covered the point in the sap of the hayan tree. Then they would wrap a piece of cloth around the sap and soak it in plant oil and a secret powder. When the Moros’ boats closed in the hunters fired many flaming arrows, setting the boats on fire. When the Moros abandoned their boats, the hunters would kill them all in the surf.”
“This will take planning,” I said. “But we must strike quickly, before Tachibana realizes he’s facing an uprising and calls for help from Rabaul or Mindanao.”
“Our people understand,” Tomaldo said. “No fishing boats, no food.”
“Good. As soon as you can collect the men who can handle bows and arrows, I’ll come in and show them how to make the new arrows. When we’re ready, we’ll go into Orotai at night. I want to attack the Japs’ food warehouses in the compound and set them on fire. When the defenders come out with guns, I want archers to kill as many as they can from hidden positions around the compound.”
“We have hunters who use the bow, but ‘archers’? What are archers?”
“Hunters who shoot men instead of animals. In this case, they will be shooting Japs.”
“Animals, Japs,” he said with a shrug. “Same-same.”
“Not quite,” I said. “Hunting arrows have points which go up and down; war arrows have points that go sideways.”
“What?” Rooster asked.
“Animals on four legs have vertical ribs; humans walking or standing upright have horizontal ribs.”
Rooster, Southern city boy that he was, gave me a horrified look.
“Learned that in Scouts,” I said, proudly
. “Along with how to make a fire arrow.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Once again I discovered that there were lots of things I still didn’t know. Such as: Filipino bows and arrows didn’t much resemble American Indians’ bows and arrows. For one thing, their hunting bows looked more like the English longbows used at Agincourt, almost dwarfing the hunters who were using them. I tried pulling one and it took all my strength to get it started. Secondly, the hunting points were much smaller, almost round instead of the familiar triangle shape of American arrows, so the orientation on the shaft didn’t matter. The points, however, were designed to break off inside the victim, and that was because the points had been dipped in the sap of the camandag tree just before firing, thereby injecting a lethal poison. Getting a hit anywhere on the body meant inevitable success. Thus there was no need to construct “war” arrows.
Fire arrows were even easier in the day of gasoline; it turned out they already had them. They used them occasionally to start large brush fires on the upland savannahs to drive larger game into the arrows of a hunting team. They cut a spiral groove into the shaft of the arrow behind the point and filled that with a flammable extract from the Philippine version of a pine tree. Then they wrapped a gasoline-soaked film of cotton on top of that as the igniter. The big surprise was that they also used blowguns both as hunting and defensive weapons. The darts they fired were also poisoned, and they were amazingly accurate out to 20 feet or so.
The men who used the weapons were full-grown men, if only because they needed to be taller and strong enough to handle those extra-long bows. The first night I went to the village I met ten of them, with Tomaldo translating. We were surrounded by several teenagers, who seemed eager to join in. They showed me the armory and demonstrated some of it. One Filipino was clearly in charge of the hunters. He was much older than the rest, with a strong physique and gray hair. His name was Magron, and he seemed to command unusual respect. He made a crucial suggestion. There were two guard towers overlooking the Jap compound, each usually containing three sentries. They had spotlights and light machine guns and were similar to the ones across the river in the POW camp. We would have to neutralize them first before attacking the buildings with fire, because the Japs had cleared the area around the compound and the fire shooters needed to be closer.
The Filipinos kicked this problem around while Magron stood there, arms akimbo, waiting patiently. I’d noticed he’d been giving Rooster and me the once-over the whole time, with an expression that said we’d have to prove ourselves before he’d join us. Once the hunters had stopped arguing, he announced the solution: use the fire arrows on the guard towers first. They were all made of bamboo trunks lashed into tower frameworks and, best of all, they had thatched roofs. When the guards bailed out, some of the archers would go after them while the rest tried for the storage buildings.
They decided that they’d go into Orotai the next morning and reconnoiter the best firing positions for both the towers and the buildings inside. With Tomaldo translating, I observed that, with only ten of them, it might be difficult to get enough arrows on target to keep ahead of Jap efforts to douse the fires. He pointed out that the Japs had to go to the town’s single well to get their water, usually twice a day, just like everyone else. If they used it to put out fires, and something was done to shut down the well, what would they drink? Magron’s demeanor was that of a man who was looking forward to this little expedition.
But that raised my final concern: What about the townspeople, or for that matter, the villagers nearby? Shouldn’t we be thinking about a quiet evacuation of the town before the attack on the compound? And what about the POWs? Rooster asked. Surely the Japs would order the guards across the river to machine-gun all the POWs the moment a whole-scale attack was mounted on the compound in Orotai. More animated discussion and even some arguing followed those two questions. Tomaldo and Magron finally came up with the solution—we would either have to neutralize the prison guards at the POW compound first, and then attack the main compound, or do it simultaneously. With just ten shooters? I asked.
Frowns everywhere. I finally raised a hand. Everyone politely went quiet.
“It is obvious,” I said, as Tomaldo quietly translated, “that we have much more thinking and planning to do. The Japanese did not conquer all of East Asia because they were stupid. If they feel cornered, they will come out of that compound with every man willing to die for his emperor, as long as he takes every Filipino man, woman, and child on Talawan with him. They are Japanese: that is what they do. Yes?”
There were reluctant nods all around. Reluctant because the Filipinos wanted blood. Of course they did, but this nugget was beginning to understand why the generals got paid the big bucks: I didn’t know the first thing about planning out a campaign of attack, or how to solve all the what-ifs that even we amateurs had already identified, so we had to proceed slowly and carefully.
Magron finally raised his hand and then spoke up. Tomaldo listened for a few minutes and then translated. “Magron says there is an old Chinese expression that makes sense here,” he said.
“And?”
“That expression is: slowly, slowly, catchee monkey.”
Right, I thought, nodding. “What does Magron suggest?”
“We do this thing in pieces. First, get most of the people out of Orotai. Not in one night, but over several nights. When most of the people have gone, do something to the town’s well. Not poison, but perhaps fill it in. Then, the English prisoners: do not attack the guards. Wait for heavy rain, then cut the fences instead. Get them out and get them to safety. Send two men for each prisoner—they are very weak. Then when Orotai is empty, and the water is gone, and the prisoners are safe, then burn the two remaining fishing boats. We do not have to attack the compound. When there is no more food or water, they will come out, screaming banzai and all of them ready to die. Then we help them do that.”
“But they have rice stored in that compound,” I said. “They can fish from the shore if they have to. Don’t we still have to burn the godowns?”
Tomaldo asked Magron.
“No,” was the answer. “The rice they stole is still in the open baskets they took from the people in Orotai. All we have to do is get a small boy into the godown one night with some tubes of water. Pour some water into each basket. It does not take much; by morning all the rice in the basket will turn green. Ruined.”
Mold, I thought. Magron was right: in this heat, wet, sticky rice would propagate mold rapidly throughout each basket.
I sat back and thought about all this. Forget the all-out frontal assault, bows and arrows against machine guns. Do it in pieces. Quietly. The town’s population diminishing, while whoever was left behind made themselves visible, as if all the townspeople were still there.
It made sense. I finally realized that these nice people here on Talawan, simple fishermen and farmers that they might be, also had a tradition of stubborn defensive warfare against centuries’ worth of invaders. The Japs were just the latest chapter and the locals had finally had enough. I looked over at Rooster. He was nodding.
“Magron is right,” I declared. “We will do it his way.”
I waited for Tomaldo to translate and watched Magron slowly beam.
“Now,” I said. “You are many. Rooster and I are just two. How can we help you?”
Tomaldo posed that question to Magron and the others. Magron answered for them all. Tomaldo suddenly looked like a man who didn’t want to translate what he’d just heard. I tried to help him out.
“Let me guess,” I said to him. “Stay out of our way and let us take care of this problem?”
Tomaldo looked quite relieved, if a little embarrassed. “He said to tell you that, yes, but to be polite. He does not want you two to lose face.”
“Got it,” I said. “I think we need to get back to Father Abriol. Can someone lead us back to the lava tube?”
Tomaldo began setting that up, but Magron apparently had one more
idea. He buttonholed Tomaldo for another minute or so, who then turned to me.
“He asks if you can help with the English prisoners, once we get them out. You speak their language, know their customs. Perhaps one of you can go with the men who will set them free, so that they will know we are their friends.”
“We can both go,” I said. “Tell him that is a good idea.” Then I remembered something my skipper had told me. “And by the way, there is another old saying that applies here.”
Magron looked over at me once Tomaldo translated that, and raised his eyebrows.
“Tell him that in any plan for a battle, the enemy always gets a vote.”
Magron didn’t get it at first, probably because the word “vote” was unfamiliar, but then he did. He laughed out loud, and nodded. Then the war conference broke up as he took charge and began to issue orders. A few minutes later we were on our way back to the mountain to tell our warrior priest that life was about to get really interesting on dear old Talawan.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Father Abriol was not in great shape as it turned out. His swelling was down but his bruises were now in Technicolor. Tini and her grandmother had been replaced by two much older women, who’d arrived with baskets of herbs and potions. Abriol was mad at them because they’d begun to cut back on the opium-based stuff while they switched him over to less addictive remedies. More importantly, he was horrified that we had “allowed” the Filipinos to take things into their own hands for an attack on Tachibana and his compound. Between the pain and his concern for what might happen now, he was definitely not pleased with the two of us.
The Nugget Page 24