South by Java Head

by Alistair MacLean

  “Save your breath,” he said contemptuously. “Do you think anyone would believe you? You’re obviously in cahoots with the Japs, one way or another—and we have enough on our plates without making ourselves the present of another seven enemies.” There was a pause, then Nicolson went on thoughtfully, “A pity you promised this man to the gallows, Captain Findhorn. I think Van Effen went to the heart of the matter at once—it would simplify things all round if we shot the lot of them now. We’ll probably have to do it later on anyway.”

  There was a long pause, then Findhorn said quietly: “You are very silent, Siran. You miscalculated, perhaps? Almost your last blunder? You can be very grateful, Captain Siran, for the fact that we are not callous murderers of your own stamp. But please bear in mind that it will require very little provocation indeed for us to carry out the suggestion just made.”

  “And just move back a bit, will you?” Nicolson asked. “Right to the edge, there. And maybe a quick search of your pockets wouldn’t do any harm, either.”

  “Already done, Mr. Nicolson,” the captain assured him. “We took a whole arsenal off them after you left the saloon last night … Still see that sub?”

  “Almost due south of us now, sir. About two hundred yards offshore.”

  He suddenly dropped the binoculars and pushed himself back down into the hollow. A searchlight had just been switched on in the conning-tower of the submarine, its dazzling white beam swinging rapidly along the rocky shore of the island. Almost at once it found the little notch in the shoreline where the lifeboats lay, steadied there for a couple of seconds, then started moving slowly up the hill, almost in a line with the hollow where they lay hidden.

  “Brigadier!” Nicolson’s voice was sharp, urgent.

  “It’ll be a pleasure,” Farnholme grunted. He slid the carbine forward along the ground, cradled it to his shoulder, sighted and fired, all in one swift movement. It was set for single shot firing, but the single shot was enough: through the fading echoes of the crash of the carbine they caught the distant tinkle of glass, and the white glare of the light faded quickly to a dull red glow, then died away altogether.

  “Stay with us a few more days, will you, Brigadier?” Findhorn said dryly. “I can see that we’re going to need you around … Hardly a very bright move on their part, was it, Mr. Nicolson? I mean, they’ve already had a sample from the Brigadier here.”

  “Bright enough,” Nicolson differed. “A calculated risk, and it paid off. They’ve found out where the boats are and they know now, from the flash of the brigadier’s rifle, where we are—two facts it might have cost a landing party a long time and a good few lives to find out. But it was really the boats they were worried about, not us. If they can stop us from leaving the island, they can get us at their leisure, preferably in daylight.”

  “I’m afraid I agree with you,” Findhorn said slowly. “The boats come next. Sink them from the sub, you reckon? We can’t stop them if they do.”

  “Not from the sub.” Nicolson shook his head. “They can’t see the boats and it would take them all night to sink them with random fire: a hundred lucky shots at least. A landing party to knock the bottom out of the boats and spike the air tanks is more likely—or tow them or row them out to sea.”

  “But—but how do they get ashore?” Vannier asked.

  “Swim if they have to, but they don’t have to. Most subs carry collapsible or inflatable dinghies of some kind. For a sub operating in close waters, almost certainly in contact with their own troops on a score of different islands, it would be essential.”

  No one spoke for several minutes. The little boy was muttering to himself in his sleep, and Siran and his men were whispering in the far corner of the hollow, their words indistinguishable. Then Willoughby coughed to catch their attention.

  “The flood of time is rolling on, etc., etc.,” he quoted. “I have an idea.”

  Nicolson smiled in the darkness. “Careful, Willy.”

  “Base envy hates that excellence it cannot reach,” Willoughby said loftily. “My plan has the simplicity of true genius. Let us sail away.”

  “Brilliant.” Nicolson was heavily sarcastic. “Muffled oars in the moonlight. How far do you reckon we get?”

  “Tush! You underrate me. Willoughby soaring in the realms of pure thought and our worthy chief officer still trudging in the mire. We use the engine, of course!”

  “Oh, of course! And how do you propose to persuade our pals out there to wear ear-plugs?”

  “I don’t. Give me an hour on that exhaust-pipe and baffle plates and I guarantee you won’t hear that engine a hundred yards away. Lose some speed of course, but not much. And even if they do hear it, you know yourself how difficult it is to get a bearing on a faint sound over the sea at night. Freedom beckons, gentlemen. Let us no longer delay.”

  “Willy,” Nicolson said gently, “I have news for you. The human ear is not to be depended on for finding bearings at night, but then the Japs don’t have to depend on it. They use hydrophones, which are very accurate indeed—and which couldn’t care less whether you muffle the exhaust or not as the propeller thrash in the water will serve them excellently.”

  “Damn them,” Willoughby said with feeling. He lapsed into silence, then spoke again. “Let no one despair. Willoughby shall think of something else.”

  “I’ve no doubt you will,” Nicolson said kindly. “Don’t forget that the north-west monsoon only lasts for another couple of months or so and it would be handy if—down, everybody, down!”

  The first bullets were thudding soggily into the earth around them, ricocheting with a vicious whine off the rocks and whistling evilly overhead as they heard the barrage opening up from the deck of the submarine. It had moved a good deal closer inshore and it sounded as if at least a dozen different guns, machine-guns, two at least, included, were all firing at once. And someone aboard the ship had been fast enough to take a bearing on the flash of Farnholme’s carbine: the fire was as accurate as it was heavy.

  “Anybody hurt? Anybody hurt at all?” It was difficult to hear the captain’s low, hoarse voice above the crackle of gunfire.

  There was no immediate reply, and Nicolson answered for the others. “I don’t think so, sir. I was the only one exposed at the time.”

  “Good enough—and no retaliation just now,” Findhorn warned. “No reason for anybody to get his head blown off.” He lowered his voice with evident relief. “Mr. Nicolson, this baffles me completely. The Zeros didn’t touch us when we left the Viroma: the sub didn’t try to sink us: and the seaplane left us alone even after we’d thumped their pals. And now they’re trying their best to massacre us. It doesn’t make any kind of sense at all to me.”

  “Still less to me,” Nicolson admitted. He winced involuntarily as a bullet thudded into the earth a couple of feet above his head. “And we can’t stay here and do an ostrich act, sir. This is a cover for an attack on the boats. Pointless otherwise.”

  Findhorn nodded heavily in the darkness. “What do you want to do? I’m afraid I’m a dead loss, Johnny.”

  “As long as you’re not just dead,” Nicolson said grimly. “Permission to take some men down to the shore, sir. We must stop them.”

  “I know, I know … Good luck, boy.”

  Seconds later, in a brief lull in the firing, Nicolson and six men slithered over the edge of the bank and started downhill. They hadn’t gone five paces when Nicolson whispered in Vannier’s ear, caught the Brigadier by the arm and retraced his steps with him to the eastern edge of the hollow. They lay down on the edge, peering into the darkness. Nicolson put his mouth to the Brigadier’s ear. “Remember, we play for keeps.”

  He could just sense Farnholme nodding in the darkness.

  They didn’t have to wait long. Within fifteen seconds they heard the first faint, cautious slither, followed at once by Findhorn’s voice, sharp and hoarse, jerking out a question. There was no reply, just another ominous movement, a swift rush of feet, the sudden click as Nicol
son’s torch switched on, the brief glimpse of two running stooping figures with upraised arms, the stuttering crash of Farnholme’s automatic carbine, the heavy thud of falling bodies and then the silence and the darkness together.

  “Bloody fool that I am! I’d forgotten all about these.” Nicolson was crawling about the hollow, torch hooded in his hand, tearing away weapons still clenched in dead hands. He let the light play on them for a moment. “The two hatchets from number two lifeboat, sir. They’d have made a pretty mess at close quarters.” He shone his torch at the other end of the hollow. Siran was still sitting there, his face smooth and expressionless. Nicolson knew that he was guilty, guilty as hell, that he had sent his three men to do the hatchet-work—literally—while he remained safely behind. He also knew that the bland, inscrutable face would remain that way as Siran denied all knowledge of the attack: dead men couldn’t talk, and the three men were quite dead. There was no time to waste.

  “Come here, Siran.” Nicolson’s voice was as expressionless as Siran’s face. “The rest won’t give any trouble, sir.” Siran rose to his feet, walked the few paces forward and toppled to the ground like a falling tree trunk as Nicolson struck him viciously behind the ear with the butt of his Navy Colt. The blow had carried sufficient weight to crush the skull, and it had sounded like it, but Nicolson was on his way even before Siran had fallen, Farnholme at his heels. The whole episode hadn’t taken thirty seconds from start to finish.

  They ran at full speed, uncaringly, down the slope, stumbling, slipping, recovering and racing on again. Thirty yards from the beach they heard a sudden flurry of shots, screams of pain, oaths, high-pitched voices shouting some insane gibberish, another volley of shots then the sounds of more blows, of struggling and violent splashing as men fought hand to hand in the water. Ten yards from the water’s edge, well ahead of Farnholme by this time, and still pounding along at the full stretch of his legs, Nicolson switched on his torch. He had a confused impression of men struggling furiously in the shallow water round the boats, caught a brief glimpse of an officer poised above a fallen McKinnon with a sword or bayonet swung back for a decapitation stroke and then leapt, one arm round the officer’s throat and the gun exploding in his back, before he landed cat-like on his feet. Again his torch swung up, steadied for a moment on Walters and a Japanese sailor thrashing and splashing as they rolled over and over in the mud-stained water: nothing to be done there—as easy to kill the one as the other. The beam lifted, and stopped again.

  One of the lifeboats, well aground, was lying almost parallel to the shore. Two Japanese sailors, knee-deep in the water and sharply profiled in the harsh glare of the torch, were standing close by the stern, one of them stooping with bent head, the other upright, arm upraised, his right hand far behind his head. For a long second of time, all volition inhibited by the light that bunded their shrinking eyes, the two men held their respective positions, a frozen sequence from some nightmare ballet: and then, in perfect unison, petrified stillness yielded to convulsive action, the stooped man straightening with his right hand clutching something snatched from the net bag tied to his belt, the other dropping his left shoulder and lunging forward as his throwing arm came flashing over, and Nicolson, even as he brought his Colt up, his finger tightening on the trigger, knew that he was already too late.

  Too late for Nicolson, too late for the Japanese sailors. For a second time they stiffened into immobility, brought up short by the savage jerk of some invisible hand, then they began to move again, slowly, this time, very slowly, pivoting forward with an almost ponderous deliberation on rooted, lifeless legs: Nicolson’s torch had switched off and the crash of Farnholme’s carbine was only an echoing memory as they fell on their faces, one full length into the water, the other jackknifing heavily over the gunwale of the lifeboat and crashing on to the sternsheets, the sound of his falling lost in a flat explosive crack and sheet of blinding white as the grenade exploded in his hand.

  After the bright light of the bursting grenade the darkness was doubly dark. Darkness everywhere, on land, over the sea and in the sky, complete and, for the moment, impenetrable. Away to the southwest a last few stars winked faintly in an indigo sky, but they too were going, extinguished one by one as the unseen blanket of cloud closed with the horizon. Dark, and very silent; there was no sound, no movement at all.

  Nicolson risked one quick sweep with his lighted torch, then clicked off the switch. His men were all there, all on their feet, and the enemy were the enemy no longer, just little dead men lying still in the shadows. They had had next to no chance at all: they had expected no attack, deeming the Viroma’s crew safely pinned in the hollow by the submarine’s covering fire: they had been silhouetted against the sea, always lighter by night than the land: and they had been caught at a crippling disadvantage in the moment of stepping from their rubber boats into the sea.

  “Anybody hurt?” Nicolson kept his voice low.

  “Walters is, sir.” Vannier matched his tone with Nicolson’s. “Pretty badly, I think.”

  “Let me see.” Nicolson moved across to the source of the voice, hooded the torch with his fingers and clicked the switch. Vannier was cradling Walters’s left wrist in his hand: it was a gaping, gory wound just below the ball of the thumb, and half the wrist was severed. Vannier already had a handkerchief twisted as a tourniquet, and the bright red blood was pulsing only very slowly from the wound. Nicolson switched off the light.

  “Knife?”

  “Bayonet.” Walters’s voice was a good deal steadier than Vannier’s had been. He prodded something lying still and shapeless at his feet in the water. “I took it from him.”

  “So I gathered,” Nicolson said dryly. “Your wrist’s a mess. Get Miss Drachmann to fix it for you. It’ll be some time before you can use that hand, I’m afraid.” Which was one way of saying ‘never,’ Nicolson thought bitterly to himself. The clenching tendons had been severed clean through, and it was a certainty that the radial nerve had gone also. Paralysis, in any event.

  “Better than the heart,” Walters said cheerfully. “I really need that.”

  “Get up there as fast as you can. The rest of you go with him—and don’t forget to announce yourselves. For all the captain knows we lost—and he’s got a gun lying handy. Bo’sun, you stay with me.” He broke off suddenly as he heard splashing in the vicinity of the nearest lifeboat. “Who’s there?”

  “Me, Farnholme. Just investigatin’, old boy. Dozens of them, actually dozens of them.”

  “What the devil are you talking about?” Nicolson asked irritably.

  “Grenades. Bags full of ‘em. Fellow here like a walkin’ arsenal.”

  “Take them away, will you? We may need them. Get someone to help you.” Nicolson and McKinnon waited till the last of the men had gone, then waded out towards the nearest lifeboat. Just as they reached it, two machine-guns opened up from the darkness to the south, tracer bullets burning white then extinguishing in vicious plops and gouts of water. Now and then a freak ricocheted off the water and whined thinly into the darkness: more rarely still a bullet thudded solidly into one or other of the lifeboats.

  Stretched full length behind a boat, only his head above water, McKinnon touched Nicolson on the arm. “What’s all this in aid of, sir?” The soft Highland voice was puzzled, but completely unworried. Nicolson grinned to himself in the darkness.

  “Anybody’s guess, Bo’sun. Chances are that their landing party was supposed to signal—torch or something—if they landed safely. Alarums and excursions ashore and our pals on the sub climbing the walls with uncertainty. Finally, they open up—no signal.”

  “And if that’s all they’re wanting, why shouldn’t we be sending them one?”

  Nicolson stared at him for a moment in the darkness, then laughed softly. “Genius, McKinnon, pure genius. If they’re all confused, and if they imagine their pals ashore are as confused as they are themselves, any old signal has a chance of getting by.”

  And so it proved
. Nicolson raised his hand above the lifeboat gunwale, flashed the torch irregularly on and off, then hurriedly withdraw his arm. To any trigger-happy machine-gunner that pinpoint of light must have been the answer to a prayer, but no line of tracers came lancing at them out of the darkness. Instead, both machine-guns abruptly ceased fire and all at once the night was silent and still. Land and sea alike might have been deserted; empty of all life: even the blurred silhouette of the submarine lying quietly out to sea was only a shadow, insubstantial and quite unreal, more imagined than seen.

  Furtive attempts at concealment seemed not only unnecessary but dangerous. Unhurriedly both men rose to their feet and inspected the lifeboats in the light of the torch. Number two, Siran’s boat, had been holed in several places, but all above the water-line, and she appeared to be making little or no water: several of her airtight tanks had been punctured, but sufficient were undamaged to provide a still reasonable margin of safety.

  It was a different story altogether with number one, the motor lifeboat. If anything, even fewer random shots had pierced her hull, but she was already settled deeply, heavily in the shallow water, her floorboards covered. The water inside the boat was stained and streaked with red blood from the shockingly mutilated Japanese sailor who lay draped over the gunwale, and it was below this barely recognisable remains of a human being that Nicolson found the cause of the trouble. The same grenade that had blown off a hand and most of a face had also blown a hole clear through the bottom of the boat, shattering the garboard strake for eighteen inches of its length and the adjacent planks right up to the bilge stringer on the starboard side. Nicolson straightened slowly and looked at McKinnon in the backwash of reflected light.

  “Holed,” he murmured briefly. “I could stick my head and shoulders through that gap in the bottom. Take us days to patch the damn thing.”

  But McKinnon wasn’t listening. The beam of the torch had shifted and he was staring down into the boat. When he spoke, he sounded remote, indifferent.