“Something we have to do, Sergeant,” Flanagan said. “Do you remember your service number?”
“Yeah,” the man said and rattled off a seven-digit number.
“How about your wife’s maiden name, your mother’s maiden name?”
“Okay. My wife’s maiden name was Malden, Mary Ann Malden. My mother, rest her soul, was a Shaughnessey, Mary Margaret Shaughnessey.”
“Good enough,” Flanagan said. “I’m Chief Torpedoman Flanagan of the Eelfish. I’ve got some orders for you.”
“I know,” McGillivray said. He turned and spoke rapidly in Tagalog to some men who had materialized out of the bushes.
“They’ll lead the way,” he said to Flanagan. “Point men. They can see in the dark like cats. I’ll go ahead of you. Six men behind you. We’ve got a pretty long walk, all uphill. If you get winded, say so, and we’ll stop. We’re used to this.”
Two hours later the party stopped. “Camp is just ahead,” McGillivray said. “I’ll give you time to get your breath, so when my people speak to you you won’t be heavin’ like a damned whale, the way you been heavin’ the last hour.” He grinned, and Flanagan saw his white teeth shine in the faint starlight. They moved toward the camp, and Flanagan heard the low voices of sentries challenging the party and McGillivray’s answers. At the edge of the camp clearing they stopped, and Flanagan saw two or three small fires burning. He looked around and saw a smiling Filipino, rifle held at port arms across his chest, next to him.
“Pretty good security you’ve got,” he said.
“Damned good,” McGillivray said. “There’s about four thousand Jap troops over the other side of this mountain. A good five thousand farther away. They can’t get to us except along two trails, and both of them are guarded by my people. We’re safe enough here.” He moved toward a small shelter. A figure came out of the shelter with two small stools, and Flanagan saw that the figure was a girl.
“We’ll have a little tea and then you can give me the stuff you brought me,” the Army man said. He sat down on one of the stools and Flanagan sat on the other, placing the haversack beside the stool.
“How long you people been at sea?”
“About sixteen days.”
“Going right back after this caper?”
“No,” Flanagan said. “We’ll go to a patrol area. We won’t be back for another two months, maybe a little less.”
“Figured it might be something like that,” the Army man said. “Jesus! All that time in a little submarine! My people talked about that and figured you might like to have a good meal, but let’s get the business over first.”
Flanagan reached around his back and undid the strap to the belt. He held the belt and explained about the thermite charge inside the pouch and how to get the orders out of the pouch.
“Thermite?” McGillivray said. “I can use that stuff.” He motioned at a small lean Filipino who came over to him.
“This is José,” he said. “Best damned explosives man in the Islands.” He spoke rapidly in slurred Tagalog to the man, who picked up the canvas belt and trotted away. He came back in a few minutes and handed McGillivray a thick packet of paper. McGillivray turned so he could use the firelight and read through the orders.
“So Old Doug is going to come back,” the Army man said. “That’s going to end our nice life here.” Flanagan started to reach for the haversack and then changed his mind.
“This isn’t any surprise, you know,” the Army Sergeant said. “Some of the older heads in my group, we call them the wise men, they said this was going to happen before the next new moon.” He looked narrowly at Flanagan.
“Don’t laugh at things like that, sailor. Those wise men can tell you things that would shake you right out of your submarine. They talk with the spirits and they’ve been doing things like that for a thousand years. When I give them the word tomorrow they won’t be surprised.
“Like I said before, my people don’t understand how you can live on a small submarine for so long, so they’ve sort of fixed up a little celebration for you. Man who lives on a submarine has to eat out of cans, so we’ve got some fresh roast pig. Not wild pig, good tame pigs we stole from the Japs.” He leaned back, his face granitelike in the firelight.
“Any good reason I have to get off my ass and take you back down that mountain to that boat tonight? If there isn’t you can stay here tonight and tomorrow and go back tomorrow night. We’ve got some good rum. Make it ourselves out of sugarcane. And about half of my people are girls. You’d see that if it was daylight. We live on a reverse schedule here. We stay up nights and sleep days. The Jap lives on a regular schedule. Gives us an advantage.”
“Roast pig, rum, and girls?” Flanagan said softly. “You live a pretty good war, Sergeant.”
“It’s been a tough war at times,” McGillivray said. “But I’m a Georgia boy, Chief. Sherman told us what war was like when he ripped through my home state. I decided to make the war as good as I could when I could.” He turned as a woman came up to the two men.
“Chow’s about ready,” McGillivray said. “You need anything out of that sack you lugged up here?”
“No,” Flanagan said. “All that’s in it is some sulfa powder for you and some emergency rations for me in case I got stranded out in that boat waiting to get picked up.”
“I can sure use sulfa,” McGillivray said. “We have to steal our medicines from the Jap, and he hasn’t got much that’s worth stealing. Let’s eat.” He led the way deep into the trees where there were a half-dozen deep pits, each full of glowing coals with two pigs roasting on spits above each fire pit. Flanagan found a seat on a log, and a small, slim girl brought him a mug made from a coconut shell. She smiled at him, and he raised the shell to his lips and sipped. The homemade rum was smooth but there was a bite in it. He took a deeper swallow. The girl patted his knee, smiled, and moved away. Flanagan noted that while she was small and slight she had the powerful calves of a person used to walking in mountainous areas. She came back to him with two tin plates, one full of fresh salad greens, the other piled high with steaming yams and chunks of fragrant roast pork. She squatted in front of him holding the plate of salad greens. He reached for it but she pulled it away.
“You eat. I hold the plate for you. No forks. No table. Okay? Use fingers, like we do.”
McGillivray, seated a few feet away, chuckled. “When in Rome, sailor. If you like her invite her to eat from your plate.”
“I am ugly,” the girl said, tossing her long black hair. “The sailor will not like me.”
“Help yourself to some food,” Flanagan said. He could feel the warmth of the rum in his stomach. The girl smiled at him and delicately scooped up two fingers of salad and put it in her mouth. Flanagan followed her example and was pleased by the crisp freshness of the food. He reached for the coconut shell and took a long swallow of the rum. It didn’t bite as much, he noticed.
“Not too much too quick!” the girl said. She moved the coconut shell out of reach. “Too much, too quick, you go to sleep damned quick!” She giggled and tore a chunk of roast pork into bite-size pieces and held a piece toward Flanagan. He reached for it and she pulled it away.
“Open mouth. I feed you.”
“You’re home free, sailor,” McGillivray said. “When they start feeding you all you got to do is sit there and let it all come to you.
Flanagan looked at the guerrilla leader. “One thing, Sergeant. This isn’t someone’s woman, is it?”
“No worry,” McGillivray said. He waited as the girl went back to the fire, and then he turned toward Flanagan.
“The Japs killed her husband about a year and a half ago. She came with us right after that. She’s a scout. Fastest woman with a knife you ever saw. She’s clean. We don’t have any venereal disease here. All you’ve got to worry about is if you’re enough man. Most of my people are scared to death of her.”
“Thanks a heap,” Flanagan said. He smiled at the girl as she returned with a fresh pl
ate of roast pork chunks.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“The sisters in the convent called me Mary,” she said. “I like it better if you call me my right name. Maria.”
“Give me a little squirt of that rum, Miss Maria,” Flanagan said. She shook her head. “No. You go to sleep damned quick if you drink more.” She shook her long black hair.
“My Inglis, my Spanish, not so good now. No practice. The big man, he speaks our tongue, Tagalog. That is good. No mistakes when everyone speak the same language. Now eat some more meat. Make you strong!” She giggled at him and bowed her head.
The party, if you could call it that, Flanagan thought to himself, was very quiet. Hardly anyone spoke out loud. He saw figures coming and going near the cooking fires, heard soft chatter from shadowy groups of men and women. When two or three of the Filipinos toppled over, the victims of too much rum, they were carried away with much soft laughter. Later, when he had finished eating, Maria took him by the hand and led him through the thick brush to a small shelter some distance from the main camp.
“Here it is alone,” she said softly. She led him inside the shelter and pushed him gently to his knees. He reached out and felt the edge of a thick mattress.
“Japanese take much good stuff from houses and we take from them,” she said. He heard her taking off her clothes and then felt her hands at his shoelaces. He pulled off his socks and undressed and crawled up on the mattress. She snuggled in beside him and took his hand and guided it to her small breast. He put his free arm under her head and let his hand stray down her taut belly until he found the thick mat of pubic hair. She found his lips with her mouth and they lay close together, his hands caressing her. Then she rolled away from him and spread herself for him, reaching for him, guiding him into her as he covered her. She gasped and then pulled her legs up and clasped him, her hips smashing at him. He felt his own orgasm coming and fought against it, and then lost control as she cried suddenly in ecstasy and he collapsed on her, burying his head in her black hair.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, “it’s been so long and it was never like this.”
“So long, too long, for me, too,” she whispered. He felt her reaching out to one side and then she was cleansing him with a towel. He felt the fumes of the rum in his head and relaxed, and was suddenly asleep.
He was wakened three times during the night by her insistent hand. The last time the early-morning sun streamed into the doorway of the shelter, and he turned his face away from the glare and slept again. She shook him awake with a coconut half-shell full of scalding tea. She put the shell down beside the mattress and reached outside and got a tin plate full of slices of cold pork.
“Eat. Drink. I must go now to my post until this afternoon. Do not go outside to walk around, only to go bathroom unless Big Man sends for you.” She kissed him tenderly. “That you should love such an ugly one as me,” she giggled, and then she was gone.
He finished the cold meat and the tea and crawled out of the shelter. A soft male voice said, “This way, sir. I show you shit place.” He followed the slight figure of a man who had a rifle slung over one shoulder to a place in the bushes. The man pointedly turned his back, and Flanagan did his business. “We go back, now,” the man said. “Sergeant Mac wants to talk with you.” He led the way deep into the bush, Flanagan following along behind.
“I don’t suppose you people on the ship got a chance to read this stuff?” McGillivray asked, waving the sheaf of orders in his hand.
“No,” Flanagan said.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” the Army Sergeant said. “Can’t have old Doug getting hit in the ass with twenty thousand Jap troops he doesn’t figure on meeting.” He looked at the orders. “Must be a pretty big invasion.”
“Captain told me the Navy would have seven hundred ships, that’s including everything, mine sweeps, LSTs, everything. Hell of a bunch of carriers and battleships.”
“They must mean business, must be coming back to stay,” the Sergeant said.
“They give you a tough job?”
“Nah,” McGillivray said. “There’s four bridges on the main road into Tacloban and three on the only other road. Bridges are over a hell of a deep valley ravine, kind of country a tank couldn’t get through in a year. We can blow those bridges, mine the roads. They won’t get any reinforcements in to Tacloban. Just to make the cheese a little more binding I think I’ll send some of our people in the night before the invasion and steal all the distributors out of their vehicles.”
“How about your own people, what have you got, about ten thousand?”
“No,” McGillivray said. “About three thousand is all. Most of them are spread around the mountains here, on the routes the Jap would have to take to get at us if he knew where we were, if he was sure of where we were. We could cut him to ribbons if he tried to come after us. When he starts down those two roads to reinforce Tacloban we’ll slice him up when he hits the first bridge we’ve blown. Mine the road, use mortars from the mountaintops.”
“No other way he can get to Tacloban, only on those two roads?” Flanagan asked.
“Oh, sure. He could build new roads. Take about three years to build a road five miles long through this stuff in these mountains.” He sat back on his heels and grinned at Flanagan.
“Wait until old Doug gets here and we go out to meet him, and his paymaster finds out I swore all three thousand of my people into the U.S. Army and Doug’s paymaster is going to have to give them all back pay! Won’t there be hell to pay?” His bright green eyes danced merrily.
“The girl. Maria,” he said. “She wants me to recruit you into our bunch. What have you submarine sailors got we foot sloggers ain’t?”
“Couldn’t say,” Flanagan said. “I might join up with you if I thought I could get away with it. She’s quite a woman.”
Offshore the Eelfish cruised submerged. Mike Brannon sat in the Wardroom with John Olsen and Bob Lee.
“If anything has happened to Flanagan,” Brannon said, “I’m going back to Australia and shoot me an Admiral and a Brigadier General.”
“I wouldn’t worry, Skipper,” Olsen said. “He said before he shoved off, didn’t he, that he might have a long walk and couldn’t get back last night?”
“Stands to reason, sir,” Lee spoke up. “That Army guy couldn’t have his camp too close to the shore, too close to Tacloban or the Jap airfield there. He’d have to be way up in the mountains, where he’d be safe.”
“If anyone could be safe surrounded by thousands of Japanese,” Brannon said. “But I’ll settle for that. I’m going to get some sleep. Wake me if you see anything at all on the periscope observations.”
Darkness fell with the suddenness that is typical in the tropics. Maria disengaged herself from Flanagan’s arms and stood up.
“It is time for you to go.” She handed him the half-shell of coconut, and he drank deeply of the rum.
“Drink now,” she said. “We have made love enough. I have your seed in me many times. I will make a strong boy to remember you by.” She bowed her head, and he could hear her sobbing. He reached out and lifted her into his lap, his arms around her.
“Maria,” he said awkwardly, “I’m a sailor. I have no parents, I’m an orphan. When this war is over, and I don’t think it will be too long now, I’ll retire and take my pension and come back here and by God, will you marry me?”
She peered at him in the darkness. “The nuns taught us never to believe a man, but I believe you.
“You come back. I will be here, near Tacloban. It is my home before the war. I will show you your son and I will carry your burdens for all of my life.” She buried her face in his shoulder, crying softly. Then she got up and went outside and disappeared.
When McGillivray came for him Flanagan had drained the coconut shell of rum and a second one he found outside the door of the shelter. He lurched upright and nodded to the guerrilla leader. They started off, going down the mountain trai
l. At the last cluster of bushes at the water’s edge McGillivray paused and Flanagan bumped into him. The Army man tossed the haversack Flanagan had brought with him into the rubber boat that his men had pushed out of the bushes.
“I took Betty Grable,” he said. “Shove off, sailor. See you in Manila.”
Flanagan picked up the double-ended paddle and began to move away from the shore. Then he remembered the Christmas tree Petreshock had told him about. As the boat floated on the lowering tide he fumbled with the collapsible device and finally got it pulled out and securely in its bracket. He reached for the paddle, couldn’t find it, and then discovered he was sitting on one end of it.
“Took Betty Grable,” he mumbled to himself. “Bastards took my compass, too.” He felt for the compass and found it and with his fumbling turned on the small red light.
“Brought it back, okay?” he said to himself. He began to paddle, clumsily. Somewhere in the night he heard the snoring mutter of diesel engines.
“Come alongside, you fuckers,” he muttered and kept paddling. Then he felt hands under his arms grabbing him and the familiar deck of the Eelfish under his feet. He sighed and closed his eyes. Petreshock and Jim Rice, helped by the strong arms of Doc Wharton and Charlie Two Blankets, hoisted the unconscious form of Chief Flanagan up over the bridge rail, where Bill Brosmer grabbed him in his arms. As he steadied Flanagan’s slack body his nosed twitched under his red mustache.
“Son of a bitchin’ Chief’s pissy-assed drunk and —” His nose twitched again. “And he smells of pussy!”
CHAPTER 21
Eelfish left Leyte Gulf with all four main diesel engines pounding, heading for its patrol area off Tawi Tawi. Mike Brannon and John Olsen sat in the Wardroom, drinking coffee.
Silent Sea (The Silent War Book 2) Page 27