Blood Tide

by Robert F. Jones

  “Let us expose American corruption here in the Sulu Sea,” he had argued in their councils. “The American press will love it. It will discredit the U.S. once and for all in Philippine eyes—in the eyes of all Asia, and the world. The American navy running drugs in from Thailand to further debase the American people—American youth in chemical chains forged by the U.S. Navy! And at the same time preparing a stronghold for the subsequent reconquest of the Philippines once our revolution has succeeded.”

  “They will deny it,” the leadership replied. “They will maintain that the proof we provide is faked. Besides, the American people are bored with saying no to drugs. It will only increase American jingoism and lead to a stronger American presence, greater American military aid to the puppet government in Manila.”

  But then, with a stroke of fortune that could only be God’s hand at work, Effredio Pascal had received a letter from some American girl. By happy chance—again, God’s hand?—Padre Cotinho was on Siquijor—hiding from government salvage squads—when Pascal got the letter. Pascal of course turned to his old confessor for advice. Padre Cotinho saw the whole plan clicking into place: PHILIPPINE FREEDOM FIGHTERS AID AMERICAN GIRL IN REDRESSING GRIEVANCE AGAINST U.S. NAVY PIRATES. And not just the good-looking, clean-cut young American woman, but her war-hero father as well—a navy man who’d been injustly ousted from the service he loved and served with total loyalty, and who now was prepared to take vengeance on that same navy for crimes committed against his helpless daughter. . . . It was perfect. Even the leadership had, finally, to agree.

  But they still had their doubts about Katana. So did Padre Cotinho, for that matter. A former officer of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Elderly (though he didn’t look it), and perhaps slightly loco. Perhaps, even worse, with links to Japanese organized crime. Tough-looking Japanese men accompanied him everywhere he went in the Flyaways. Yakuza? The Japanese equivalent of the Mafia? Perhaps the yakuza, quite understandably, planned to take over the operation once Millikan was destroyed. So Padre Cotinho would see to it that not a single Japanese, Katana included, survived the forthcoming battle.

  But certainly Katana had a keen tactical mind. He understood ships and weapons far better than Padre Cotinho could ever hope to, far better than the revolutionary leaders could—that was certain. And even if Katana’s battle plan failed—which it well might: Katana intended, after all, to divide his forces, and even Padre Cotinho had read enough Clausewitz to know that that was the route to disaster—even if the plan failed, there would be survivors enough, with photographs. It might even be better that way. BRAVE AMERICAN GIRL AND WAR-HERO FATHER DIE AT HANDS OF U.S. NAVY IMPERIALIST PIRATES. DESPITE AID OF FILIPINO FREEDOM FIGHTERS, RESCUE OPERATION FAILS. In a play on the phrase he had heard many Americans use, Padre Cotinho knew he couldn’t lose for losing. He finished his drink—it had grown warm now, even in the shade—and rose from his chair. A short, lean, bearded man with a thick shock of white hair that still grew low on his forehead, Cotinho looked almost military in his long black soutane. The scars of many beatings crisscrossed his hard, brown face. Padre Fagundes, watching from the window of his study in the low, stucco-walled, red-roofed rectory, studied his friend’s gait as he approached the house. Steady, erect, straight-backed, firm of tread despite his seventy years and that blasphemous breakfast of assassin’s rum—like Saint Ignatius of Loyola himself must have walked, nearly half a millennium ago, before he was wounded and found God—and the Society of Jesus—in the blood of his wound. A soldier. Ah, but the cause?

  Kasim woke them shortly before sunrise. Their rooms in the officers’ quarters were spartan but clean and airy, with mosquito-proof screens on the windows. Miranda had slept well on the tatami mat and futon, enjoying the cool night breeze and the imagined sway of the land after weeks at sea. Japanese scrolls ornamented the walls of her room—scenes of samurai and doleful ladies, of Fuji and rearing blue seas. A portrait of Hirohito, looking incredibly young and garbed in full imperial robes, hung faded on one bulkhead. Chrysanthemum blossoms, floating in a bowl of water, graced the air with their delicate perfume. Kasim brought with him bowls of strong tea and a wicker platter on which rested a black, flower-patterned lacquer bowl of steaming hot water and rolled, hot towels. He told them, smiling as always, that the capitán awaited their pleasure in his oficina.

  “Now then,” Sôbô said when they had mustered. “Down to business. Captain Miranda, Kasim, and Mr. Pascal to their scouting mission. Bosun, you and I will be off shortly to the islands of Moro Armado and Balbal on work of our own. It will give us a chance to recall old times, tell a few sea stories, no doubt, and allow you to see the scope of these islands. Later, when we return, you may advise your companions about what you have learned. By the way, lunches and beverages have been prepared for all of us, and await us in our respective boats. Now, let’s be having you.”

  “I thought Moro Armado was the name of Millikan’s gunboat,” Culdee said.

  “Yes,” Sôbô answered. “That class of gunboats was named for various Philippine islands. His is named for the island of Moro Armado, right here in the Flyaways. You’ll see it shortly. It’s a prison island, political prisoners mostly—anyone who doesn’t agree with the commodore’s policies ends up there. It sometimes provides victims for San Lázaro’s Good Friday crucifixions as well. Quaint custom, what? Tomorrow is Good Friday. But I’m afraid we’ll be too busy to attend. Now let’s be up and doing, shall we?”

  Sôbô led them out a back exit from the bunker complex and across thorn-walled trails to the lee side of the island. Two pump boats lay beached on the white sand, their big Yamaha engines tilted up at the stern. At Sôbô’s suggestion, Miranda hid behind the thorn scrub and replaced her work shirt and cap with an oversized yellow T-shirt and a bleached-out blue bandanna. “You’re tall and dark enough to pass for a Moro,” he told her. “This will complete the disguise.” With the bandanna wrapped and knotted pirate-fashion around her pinned-up hair, she did indeed look like a mundo, Culdee thought. Especially with those green eyes and that hawklike profile. And with her arms folded across her chest.

  “We go,” Kasim said. Efreddio and Miranda pushed off, Kasim started the engine with one pull of the cord, and they were on their way.

  Sôbô and Culdee headed out soon after.

  The two men beached the pump boat in the near lee of Moro Armado. In the distance Culdee could see the blinding shimmer of salt pans exploding with mirages even in the low sun of morning. Huge, gaunt figures, warping in the wind, stalked the flats, then shrank instantly, becoming squat, black antlike dots. The growl of truck engines and dredges reached them through the wind. “Prisoners,” Sôbô explained. “Mining salt. Those kennellike structures over there”—he pointed to some low, crusty-roofed lumps on the edge of the pans—“that’s where they’re housed. I think they market the salt in Zamboanga and Puerto Princesa, but of course it’s just part of Millikan’s shipping-enterprise cover. Those are the guard towers.” He pointed to some tall, skeletal gantries that encircled the salt pans. “M60 machine guns, I’m told. Barbed wire around the whole place. Ah, here comes our man.”

  A jeep bounced over the salt slabs, squealed to a rusty-drummed halt, and extruded the tallest Arab Culdee had ever seen. He was clad in white from head to foot—turban, long flapping robes, even a pair of white sandals with turned-up toes. His face looked black by contrast, and, as he approached them, storklike in his stride, Culdee saw that he had one eye missing, with a white patch covering the hole.

  “This is Balabatchi,” Sôbô said, introducing them. “The One-Eyed Crocodile, some call him, hey, old man?” He clapped Balabat-chi’s bony shoulder, and the Arab smiled brilliantly. “Nominally, he’s the island’s sailmaker and foreman of the boat-repair yard at Narr Lagoon. In fact, he is superintendent of the guard force here. And he’s with us. Now, old son”—Sôbô turned to Culdee and bowed apologetically—“if you’ll excuse us for a few moments, Bala and I have some details to iron out. To ‘finalize
,’ as you Yanks so delightfully put it.”

  Culdee walked the surf line, kicking seashells, while the two talked in Tausuq. Balabatchi looked like a slippery customer, all right. Never had Culdee seen a slier, more devious face. If there were two sides to any confrontation, you could bet that the One-Eyed Crocodile would not only play both of them but would also find a third and a fourth side as well, to make sure.

  When Sôbô returned to the boat he looked worried.

  “Blast!” he said. “Bala tells me someone made an attempt on Millikan’s life last night. Some kind of book bomb. Didn’t kill him, though, didn’t even scratch him. But now he’ll be on the alert. Stone the crows! These bloody Moros and that asinine old padre. . . . But let’s get a move on. We’ve got business at Balbal.”

  “What about Miranda?” Culdee asked. He suddenly felt his heart beat double time.

  Sôbô glanced at him, his black eyes glittering like go stones. “Out of our hands now, old-timer. You remember what Moltke said? ‘No plan survives contact with the enemy.’”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Kasim slowed the motor as they approached the reef off San Lázaro. Miranda could see the big, low, stucco-walled house that by its size alone proclaimed itself Millikan’s place. Following along the shore, she saw the fast-boat basin tucked in among the mangroves. The tin roofs of sheds flashed through coco fronds on the higher ground. Kasim cut the engine, and they drifted just inside the reef.

  “We pretend to dive conchas here,” Kasim said. “Seashell, hey?” There were face masks, snorkels, and swim fins in the bottom of the boat, the equipment all well worn and mismatched, typical island diving gear. “We work slow—despacio—to shallow water. Very easy. Never look ashore. Just peek. You look hard though later, hey? When you rest from dive on outrigger?” Miranda and Freddie nodded.

  The reef was a ruin. Great screeslopes of dead coral scarred its inshore margin. Huge elkhorns lay toppled and shattered across the bottom, and a brain coral the size of a small sedan, white as something you’d find in a pickling jar, lolled stem-side up, where dynamiters had blasted it in search of hiding grouper. A few patches of eelgrass had managed to survive, or perhaps invade the devastated ground, and Miranda moved slowly over them picking up shells. She saw nothing of value—no Gloria Maris certainly, not even any conus shells or tridacnas, just horse conchs, or something quite like them.

  Even the reef fish were few and far between—a few anemic-looking sergeant majors, a lone squirrelfish poking along as if in a trance, its colors vivid against the rubble. On one dive, Miranda thought she spotted the antennae of a rock lobster swaying at the mouth of a crevice, but when she checked it out, it proved to be nothing more than the wires of a rusted fish trap. She saw not a single moray eel. No wonder. The dynamiters had left nothing.

  “This is no good,” she told Kasim after half an hour. “No one in his right mind would dive this reef for shells. It’s all dead down there. Anyone ashore who’s watching us will know we’re just pretending.”

  “You find pretty shell?” Kasim said joyfully. His eyebrows shot upward in delight. “Bring me, I sell, we make mucho dinero.”

  Freddie blew his snorkel beside her and pushed back the mask.

  She repeated what she’d told Kasim. “He doesn’t understand,” Freddie said. “A lot of these old Moro, they don’t swim, sure don’t dive.” He said something to Kasim in Samal, the old Moro’s tribal tongue. “Okay,” Freddie said. “Let’s just move inshore steadily now, in the boat, make a slow pass. We check it out, then go.”

  As they neared the shore, they saw plenty of activity in the fast-boat basin. Men hustled from boat to boat, loading things, lugging oil drums and what looked like ammunition boxes. The ragged pulse of revving engines sounded like a swarm of hornets preparing for war.

  “I count a good ten boats in there,” Miranda told Freddie. “Maybe more; I can’t see into that far bay. Too much shade. How many men do you make out?”

  “Thirty, forty,” Freddie said. “They run so fast, can’t keep count.”

  Just then a boat idled out from under the shade and into the channel. Miranda saw machine-gun barrels sticking up at angles beside the windscreen. A man stood on the engine housing, glassing them. He was short but wide-shouldered, steady as a rock on the swaying deck, and he seemed to be wearing a navy fatigue uniform. He pointed to them and yelled something to the Tausuq at the Thunder’s helm. She leapt toward them.

  “We run?” Kasim asked. He looked nervous for the first time since Miranda had met him.

  “No,” she said. “Not fast enough, us. We wait, pretend we just fishermen.” And lots of luck, she thought.

  “Let me talk,” Freddie said. “You go back by the motor, pretend you’re fixing it. Don’t let them see you face to face.”

  Crouched by the engine, Miranda heard them talking in Moro or some other language. The wide man had a hard, military-sounded voice, imperious. Freddie whined and faltered, obsequious as a frightened islander certainly would be in such circumstances. Kasim said nothing. Miranda cut one quick glance behind her. Kasim was up in the pump boat’s bow, easing his way out of the wide man’s line of vision. He was peering curiously, wide-eyed and simple seeming, into the Thunder’s cockpit, where the driver stood watching the dialogue between Freddie and the wide man. The wide man had a big hunk of one ear missing . . .

  Then everything happened at once. The wide man began to draw his pistol. Freddie dived toward him, they grappled and teetered on the Thunder’s gunwale. Kasim was in the Thunder’s cockpit, his bolo flashing bright in a downward arc. There was the bang of the wide man’s pistol, the juicy thwop of Kasim’s bolo. Freddie and the wide man toppled into the water. Kasim yelled something to Miranda, gesturing her into the fast boat. She jumped . . .

  “God-damnit!” Commodore Millikan, watching the whole proceeding through his binoculars from the boat-basin dock, suddenly danced with fury. “Idiot!” He watched the Thunder race off in a boil of white wake. Torres and the man from the pump boat were still flailing in the water. “I’ll shoot that stupid fuck!” he yelled. The crewmen around him edged away. “Billy Torres has the brains of a sea slug—no, less.” He’d told Torres to bring the pump boat in, no fuss, no palaver, certainly no guns. The commodore wanted to talk to those people, at his leisure. If they were just innocent fisherman, all right, he’d let them go. No sense in alienating the locals any more than necessary. If they were part of this plot, whatever it was, he’d find out. So Billy gets into an argument and draws his fucking .45. . . . Trigger-happy Flips! Idiots, all of them!

  The commodore waved a boat over, jumped in, and ran out to where the men in the water were still fighting. The islander, if that’s what he was, had a knife in one hand. Billy had him by the wrist, trying to shake the knife loose. Both men were spluttering, coughing, blood dripping from their faces and diluting in the splash. Then Billy got the knife away from the islander.

  “Don’t kill him, Billy!” the commodore roared. “Kill him, and you’re dead!” He had his own pistol out now, and he fired it into the sky. Billy was still trying to cut the islander. The commodore shot into the water beside him. He had to shoot twice more before Billy got the message.

  He looked up at the commodore, rage still hot in his eyes.

  “All right, Billy,” the commodore said, trying to gain control of himself. It was hard, with the 9-millimeter Walther in his hand. “We’ll take him ashore and ask him a few questions. As I told you to begin with!”

  Two more Thunders were turning slow circles around them, awaiting orders. Only now did the commo become aware of them. His fury surged again.

  “Get them!” he yelled at the boat crews. He pointed seaward. They stared back at him, stupidly. “The other boat! Our boat! Get it! Get it back! But don’t kill the people in it!” Two Thunders roared out in pursuit of the first.

  It was a hard climb through the Balbal jungle, but Sôbô seemed tireless. Culdee’s legs were quivering after twenty minutes, and hi
s breath came short, fast, and ragged. His mouth tasted of stale salt from the sweat cascading into it faster than he could spit.

  “Hey, hold up!” he gasped at last. Sôbô turned, surprised. Culdee was slumped beside the muddy trail. “What’s the hurry?” he puffed.

  “Sorry, old man. Didn’t notice. Here, have a swallow—it’s just cool water, no whiskey.” Culdee accepted the canteen gratefully. He washed out his mouth, spat, then swallowed two long pulls. His breath was coming back.

  “Too long at sea,” he said. “No exercise except steering and and hauling. Sorry.”

  “No problem. My fault actually. Mea culpa, old bean.”

  They were heading up a steep mountain trail that was leading them into Balbal’s interior. Two short, dark, naked men with ritual scars on their faces and chests had met them at the beach. They had kinky peppercorn hair, black wiry beards, and carried spears. Negritos, Sôbô had explained briefly. He had to see their leaders this morning. It was vital.

  “You’re in pretty damned good shape,” Culdee said when he could. “How the hell do you do it? You’ve got to be pushing seventy.”

  “Sixty-eight,” Sôbô answered. “I was the youngest member of my class at the naval academy on Eta Jima. But I try to keep fit. Eat a lot of seaweed, that’s the secret. Popeye the Sailorman. That wasn’t really spinach in those cans—it was seaweed, old top. Make a lightfoot lad of you again every time.”

  “Well, I wish you’d brought a can or two along on this expedition,” Culdee said.

  It took them another hour to reach the Negrito camp, proceeding at a slower pace until Culdee’s legs could handle a steady rhythm. At one point the two guides, who had been moving so silently and invisibly that Culdee had almost forgotten them, suddenly came darting back. They looked fearful and kept jabbing their spears toward the jungle canopy ahead. One of them was whispering to Sôbô.