Blue Blood

by Peter Tonkin

  The two praus which were all that remained of Kerian’s fleet now swung in behind Tai Fun, ready for an innocent reply to the watchman’s hail. But there was no watch set here. Unknown to the pirates, Eva Gruber had further aided their cause by setting the collision-alarm radar to forward focus, so not even that fine instrument warned of vessels creeping up behind. Kerian slung the first rope himself and watched the grappling hook catch on the hoist that moved the hydraulic platform on the after section. The platform was in its ‘rest’ position, which coincidentally put it exactly level with the prau’s deck. Kerian tightened the rope, secured it safely and stepped aboard Tai Fun. It was as easy as that. So disorientatingly easy was it, in fact, that the pirate captain was halfway towards the nearest gangway before he realized he was carrying nothing more threatening than a kris. He turned to the man behind him. ‘Give me a gun,’he said.

  Guns were forbidden on Pulau Baya. But then so were logging, rape and piracy. Kerian had supplied himself over the years with a range of firearms which he had kept in secret and used only on very special occasions indeed. These ranged from antique Japanese and American weapons discovered in the jungles after the war to more modern armaments supplied as part of his secret dealings with Luzon Logging and their like. He had brought it all aboard his prau, but remained very well aware that the Japanese bullets were almost all used up now and were no longer very reliable. The American stuff was more plentiful and reliable, though equally antique. The modern guns, on the other hand, had proved expensive to get hold of and incredibly expensive to load. But, as might be expected with organizations like Luzon Logging, even the apparently modern guns were not all they seemed. A man who was actually as expert as Kerian believed himself to be would have seen this. But Captain Nakatomi was right. The chief councillor’s opinion of himself was over-inflated.

  The Walther PPK, barrelled for 9mm load, was a cheap Chinese copy of the already venerable original made largely for the James Bond wannabe market. It looked the business and had fired well on the rare occasions Kerian had tried it but it was little more than a toy. The manufacture and the action were dangerously unstable. Much the same could be said of the Korean copy of the big Browning 9mm High Power that he was currently holding himself with what he fondly supposed was an expert hand. Kerian had never fired the Russian CZ52 that his nephew Bukit, the captain of the second prau, was holding. Which was lucky for Kerian because the Russian gun was genuine but chambered for Tokarev 7.65mm bullets - while it was Browning 9mms that were jammed into it. And all of them would have been very nervous indeed if they had fully understood just how ineffective the safety on the venerable Russian 9mm Makarov being carried by the last in the line actually was. All that was currently keeping him from emptying all eight shots into their backs was the fact that the trigger pull wasn’t working properly. Fearsomely dangerous-looking, and actually deadly in ways they couldn’t begin to comprehend, the ten pirates crept aboard Tai Fun.

  The first person they met was Inge. The owner’s daughter, deeply distracted by her calculation of how much water in litres per hour they would need to hydrate three hundred sick and wounded people, simply came round a corner into the corridor leading to some storerooms and then the water-sports sections further aft. And there, immediately in front of her, were two men standing, stripped to the waist, wearing traditional island costume of short sarongs. Behind them stood eight youths dressed in T-shirts and jeans. Only their colouring distinguished them from most of the youthful passengers aboard. And the fact that they, like the first two in traditional costume, were all carrying guns. The elder of the two in island costume, a wiry man of indeterminate age, with well-developed muscles turning scrawny under skin that seemed a size too big for him, stepped forward. He had a broad, long-eyed face with many wrinkles and no hair at all. There was something disturbingly feral about him; as though he had stepped out of a wild place in a much less politically correct era. It was the way his bottomless black gaze fastened so hungrily upon her cleavage then dropped unapologetically to look her right between the thighs. Only when he grinned at her did she think to scream. But by then it was too late. He did the safest thing he possibly could have done with the Browning High Power pistol he was carrying: he hit her in the head with it. She went down instantly and silently.

  ‘Hostage number one,’ said Kerian. ‘Take her to my prau and tie her up tightly.’ He licked his lips. ‘Bukit, come with me. The next woman we take is yours. But the next person we find, man or woman, becomes our guide and shield. There is more to be taken from this pretty vessel than prisoners and playthings.’

  Chapter 23: Pliny

  The second explosion was louder than the first. It was proved later that people heard it from Karachi to Chicago. Blessedly, as with the first explosion, the main power went upwards. It twisted through the upper air like a wave within the wind and many people later swore they saw it passing overhead like a distortion of the daylight itself just an instant before the sound came. It was as though the parallel lines of the sunbeams were for an instant twisted out of shape and then something huge exploded nearby. Sailendra was one of these; and he was in a good position to see it, for something flattened him as it flattened everyone else in Baya Port and many of the buildings in Baya City itself. Sailendra landed on his back on the rough stone of the pier, looking upwards. And so he saw the wave of twisting power spreading like a ripple through reality above his head. Then he heard the first microsecond of the sound before his ears gave out and refused to register the rest. Then, dazed though he was, he had the presence of mind to roll over on to his front and cover his head as a hail of red-hot pebbles came tumbling out of the sky like one of the plagues brought by the prophet Moses to Ancient Egypt.

  The first thing Sailendra heard clearly as his ears recovered some time later was the screaming. He heard the tooth-jarring rumbling first, but believed that this was just the damage done to his ears by the explosion. Only when he began to connect it with the way the ground was trembling and the harbour water had gone strangely dark and choppy did he realize that it was something more. And a glance up at the mountain showed him that the column of smoke and fire had intensified immeasurably.

  But the screaming worried him most immediately. Was it panic, he wondered, or were there people badly hurt out there?

  Had the explosion happened much earlier than it did, Sailendra would have been able to do little more than listen, look and worry. But in the interim between the arrivals of Bambang, Parang and Junior Councillor Nona, Sailendra had also made contact with the chief of the emergency services, and the chief of police. One was controlling the fire crews and the ambulances while the other had teams of officers doing their best to keep order among the crowds. Both of these officers had walkie-talkies on their persons and spread out amongst their men. And both of them turned up in the company of Bambang’s father, Mr Pelajar, the extremely capable manager of the cannery, though unfortunately he was without a walkie-talkie, as was Sailendra himself for the moment.

  But then the harbour master’s walkie-talkie arrived, brought across by Dr Nurul, the marine biologist from the prawn fishery, who had offered her services in case there was another unexpectedly marine element to the eruption to match the sudden rise in sea temperature that destroyed the fishery itself. It was the work of less than five minutes to check the wavelengths of the two other sets, and establish a four-way contact between the prince, the harbour master and the chiefs of emergency services and the police.

  Sailendra was, therefore, at the very heart of the situation, with the ability to monitor and order events as necessary, when the second explosion came. With the screaming piercing the relentless monotony of the bone-jarring rumbling, he groped for the walkie-talkie. The channels were easy: 1 was the harbour master, 2 was the emergency services, 3 was the chief of police. He himself was 4. He pressed 2. He needed feedback from fire-fighters and paramedics first, he thought.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I hear screaming. Many badly
hurt?’

  ‘First impressions say not. It’s mostly panic. Some buildings down. Some fires started, but surprisingly few casualties.’

  Sailendra pressed 3. ‘Chief? I hear screaming. It’s panic, apparently. Any problems with crowd control?’

  ‘Not yet, Your Highness. But it won’t take much and my men are spread pretty thin.’

  Sailendra frowned with thought. ‘We need people to start taking responsibility for themselves if we can. Is there any way we can get them split up into village units? Or groups from streets or districts? Get a leader or an elder responsible for each. They can organize the smaller units and report to us if there are problems that they can’t handle. That’ll make it easier to distribute food and water too, as soon as we get the chance.’

  And water at least was the next weapon in Sailendra’s armoury. With the intuition of a leader, born and bred, he saw that his people would react badly to people in authority who did nothing but lecture, bully and threaten - even if it was all for their own good. But exhausted, frightened, thirsty people would do almost anything for men who handed them water and promised them food. He pressed 1. ‘Harbour master, it’s time to break out the water,’ he said. And he turned to Bambang and Mr Pelajar. ‘I have a job for you two, your men, and your trucks,’ he added.

  In actual fact, adding to the legendary status of those times and the young prince’s part in the events, it was Bambang who found work for him. Forty minutes later, with the first of many blizzards of thick white ash-flakes beginning to settle over the increasingly panicky crowd, the indefatigable boy was back. ‘The trucks are loaded and ready, Your Highness,’ he said. ‘But I thought it would help keep the people calmer if you came with us when we started giving the bottles out. You could give out a little hope and comfort with the water. Bring everyone up to date about when the ships are likely to get here and what the plans are then...’

  Sailendra turned to Parang. ‘It’s a good idea,’ he said. ‘I’ll go in one. Why don’t you and Councillor Nona go in the other. Dr Nurul, you have your own walkie-talkie; I am call number 4 so we’ll make you number 5. You can stay here and update me as need be, especially as you can liaise with the harbour master.’ He looked up at the rapidly darkening sky. ‘We’re losing sunlight and that’s good, because it’ll cool things down for a while. But if we lose daylight things will get pretty tense, especially if the fallout gets any thicker. Or hotter. I need to know the instant we have contact with the first ships.’ Then he went off on Bambang’s impatient heels, hurrying through the increasingly terrified crowd as fast as their fear would let him.

  For the next two hours, Sailendra rode the back of the water truck, distributing water, calm and hope in equal measures, though he started to become increasingly tense himself as the pall of smoke from the volcano spread lower, thicker and faster than the first high plume. The light thinned and the blizzard of ash thickened relentlessly. As the unnatural shadows began to fill the air, so the flakes went from white to black, to white to orange. And it was only when an orange flake fell on the back of his hand that he realized the blizzard was no longer of ash but of fire.

  But it was at that precise moment of transition from bad to worse that the walkie-talkie shrilled and Dr Nurul shouted, ‘The harbour master is in touch with the first ships. They’ll be here and ready to take the first nine hundred to one thousand aboard within the next two hours, maybe three.’

  After Inge, the next people aboard Tai Fun unfortunate to come across Kerian and his Bugis pirates were Gabriella and Eva. It was because of Eva. Coming off watch for a while, as Tai Fun joined the more predictable and controlled stragglers behind the main rescue fleet, she went looking for Inge as she often did. The women had become friends, the owner’s daughter unaware of the navigator’s borderline worship. But when Eva could not find Inge, she went to ask Gabriella whether she knew where she was. As a matter of fact, Gabriella was fairly certain Inge had said something about finding some items down in the ship’s storage area and so the two women set off together, running side by side down the gangways. Side by side still, they came round a corner and found themselves face to face with the would-be pirates. Gabriella was stunned. Not by the presence of the men so much as by the fact that she knew at least one of them. ‘Councillor Kerian!’ she said, in her fluent Indonesian baha Indonesia. ‘I thought you were on Pulau Baya! Is Prince Sailendra here? Or Secretary Parang?’

  ‘We have come to ask your help...’ Kerian stepped forward. ‘There are many sick and dying...’

  ‘Of course...’ Gabriella stepped forward in response, moved by ready sympathy long before her brain actually engaged.

  Up on the bridge, just at the very moment that she took her fatal step, a wall of force, twisting through the air just ahead of the sound of the second explosion, glanced off the clearview with enough power to split it from side to side. Tai Fun seemed to stagger. Gabriella lurched forward into Kerian’s arms. He hit her on the side of the head with the massive Browning pistol and she dropped like a stone.

  Eva Gruber gasped in a breath and let out a scream that would have shattered glass. But she screamed at the very instant that the sound of the explosion arrived, so the warning she tore out of her straining lungs was lost below the overwhelming rumble of the volcano’s agony. And by the time the sound had faded into relative quiet, she also lay insensible on the deck. ‘Take them to my prau,’ ordered Kerian. ‘We will find another guide.’

  The next crew member that the pirates found was le Chef. One look at the fearsome array of weaponry and the state of the desperadoes who were armed with it, stopped the bellicose French engineer dead in his tracks.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ he snarled in his thickly accented English.

  By way of answer, Kerian pointed the Browning unwaveringly at his face. The chef was a pragmatist. He knew force majeure when he saw it. So he became at once exactly what Kerian wanted him to be - part guide, part shield. But le Chef was no fool. He knew that if he led the strange, not very sane, invaders to the central areas, he would more than likely lead them into confrontation with Captain Olmeijer, Mr Nordberg or - and this really did worry him - with Mr Greenbaum or Captain Mariner. The prospect of being trapped between ten well-armed pirates and the man who had taken on two blazing jet-skis with nothing but a hose and a bit of advice from the sailing master really made him think very hard indeed. He led Kerian and his men, therefore, to those sections of the vessel which he thought would be emptiest and quietest.

  These areas were the storerooms midships on the lowest decks, surrounded with well-packed shelving and kept well away from heat and light, and he led them down. And the roiling darkness that swept so rapidly across the sky ahead remained something of which they remained in blessed ignorance, as they remained ignorant of what had caused the thunder and the fact that the clearview now looked as though it had been struck by lightning. As, indeed, these simply mesmerizing phenomena ahead kept the officers aboard Tai Fun in continued ignorance of the two praus grappled to the stern.

  Kerian’s eyes gleamed greedily at the sight of the supplies all around him. But he was wise enough to know there must be more aboard than the stock available from most ships’ chandlers and dockside supermarkets. Still, when he saw the lengths of strong cord lying coiled on a shelf, he realized that he might avail himself of one or two more useful items to help with their plans after all. Five minutes later, the unhappy chef led the pirates into the next section of the storage deck on a short rope held in Kerian’s fist, with his hands securely tied behind him, an oil-rag gag in his mouth, and the threat of a carving knife and a nail gun as well as the Browning and all the other automatic pistols at his back.

  ‘The sequence Pliny the Younger recorded in his letters to Tacitus was this,’ Dr Hirai explained. ‘As the eruption intensifies, the smoke will spread at every level. The high smoke clouds will blot out the sun and the lower clouds will kill the daylight. The blizzard of ash-flakes will become a rain of burning flakes,
then burning pumice and semi-molten rocks. The earth will continue to shake with increasing intensity, and the nearby water will become choppy at best but increasingly very rough indeed. It may be that lava flows will relieve pressure at the summit and may help the situation, though of course they will look extremely threatening and may well become dangerous if they spread down the hillsides towards any inhabited areas. Or if they come in contact with water. Herculaneum next to Pompeii was for many years assumed to have been buried by a relatively slow-moving lahar - a kind of river made of ash, molten rock, water and mud. That was how they explained how few bodies they found there at any level. The bodies in Pompeii of course were at roof-top level, showing that the end did not come until ash and pumice had fallen to a depth of two and a half metres or so. A long time after the initial eruption, you see. But the later research, as I said, suggests that, like Pompeii, Herculaneum was overcome by a nuée ardente or pyroclastic flow. These are walls of superheated rock, dust, steam and air that flow along the ground like tidal waves. They can move at speeds between one hundred and six hundred kilometres per hour and can have an internal temperature between one hundred and six hundred degrees Celsius. Modern research suggests that the people in the warehouse at Herculaneum simply smothered because the flow burned off all the oxygen as it went past. Then it vapourized their flesh and ... well, you don’t want to know the rest. But it must have been instantaneous. Quicker and easier than roasting alive, I guess. The pyroclastic flow that came out of Krakatau burned people alive on the coast of Java more than forty kilometres distant and almost certainly annihilated all the life on the islands of Subesi and Subiku on the Sumatra side.’

  ‘So these things can go over water?’ asked Richard.

  ‘Certainly. Ships recorded them the better part of one hundred kilometres out in the Java Sea in 1883. And of course when Mount Pele in Martinique went up in the famous eruption of December 16th 1902...’