An unearthly din filled the cavern of stone, the keening and wailing of old women—the manangs—as they chanted the pasyon, each in her own cadence. To Padre Cotinho’s eye they resembled molting vultures gathered at the final agonies of a dying beast—a great, noble stag perhaps, foully wounded by poachers, gut-shot and waiting for them to follow up with their axes and spears. This pabasa of the old women, this endlessly repetitive recitation of the Passion of Christ, was their way of hurrying the glorious moment of His death and their salvation. Ah, what a fine irony, Cotinho thought. They have no idea how close at hand their true salvation stands . . .
“It’s beautiful,” Padre Fagundes sighed. “Each year it moves me more deeply, each Easter I love God the more. I only wish I were younger and could make some fine sacrifice for him.”
“You could become a flagelante,” Padre Cotinho said. “In your kapirosa they wouldn’t recognize you, so your sacrifice would be all the more noble, all the less self-serving.” The kapirosa was a hood the flagelantes wore, under a crown of thorns, to disguise themselves from their neighbors as they scourged their way up Gólgota behind the crosses with their flailing thongs of glass-spiked leather. On Lázaro they scourged the cross-bearers as well as themselves.
“Really, Barto,” Padre Fagundes said, “you do have the most macabre imagination—”
“Excuse me, Diogo,” Padre Cotinho interrupted. “I have a late confession to hear.” He had seen Rosalinda enter the narthex. She looked distraught, on the verge of panic. Padre Cotinho hurried to the confessional.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” she rattled as he entered and knelt behind the screen. “They have your friend, Effredio Pascal.”
“Are you certain?”
“He fits your description, Padre, though he calls himself by a Moro name.” She described the man. It sounded like Effredio, all right.
“Has he talked?”
“Not yet. Only that the man Curt Hughes is his leader.” She paused, still breathing heavily from her run up the hillside. “I rather liked that part, about Hughes. Is that sinful of me, Padre.”
Cotinho suppressed a laugh.
“I shall absolve you in any case, my daughter,” he said. “But Effredio—he is still alive?”
“Yes. They plan to crucify him tomorrow with the others. Torres hopes the fear of that or, anyway, the bite of the nails, will draw more from him. I’m not sure they believe the business about Hughes.”
“Where do they have him now, Effredio that is?”
“At the old capilla below Gólgota, Padre. There in the ruined garden.” She waited. He was thinking. “He is heavily guarded,” she added.
“Have we a man among the guards?”
“Yes, a Cebuano—stupid but loyal. His name is Candelario de Mactan. He is to be Longinus tomorrow.”
Perfect, Cotinho thought. Longinus was the one-eyed centurion who, out of pity, delivered the spear thrust that put Christ out of His misery. According to the local legend, a spurt of blood from that sacred wound hit Longinus in the face and restored his sight. But spears can be thrust in more than one direction, and blood can cover whole islands. Once more, Padre Cotinho felt the hand of God moving in the night.
“The chapel at Gólgota, you say? I shall go there at once.”
“And I, Padre?” Rosalinda asked.
“Wait for me beneath the hibiscus near the rectory,” he said. “Padre Fagundes has the midnight mass. Pray for me, daughter. Pray for our cause and our mission. God is with us still. We will prevail.”
“Curt?” the commodore said. “I don’t believe it.”
“Neither do I, sir,” Billy agreed. “Curt’s too dumb for anything this elaborate.”
“My feelings precisely.”
“But we’ve got this guy Kasim talking anyway. He’ll give us more. I told him he’s going up on the cross at noon tomorrow.” He looked at his watch. “Today, actually.”
“Oh Christ, Billy!” He stared at Torres. “The cross?”
“Well, it’s got him thinking, and I’ll bet he’s thinking about talking. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
The commodore nodded wearily.
“And don’t worry. It’s just nails and whips. I won’t expend any ordnance, sir.” Billy laughed.
The commodore looked up at him. He wouldn’t be baited. The bags under his eyes felt full of sand.
“You’re a cruel man, Warrant Gunner Torres.”
“But good at my job, sir. Don’t get upset—he won’t die. At the touch of the first spike, he’ll spill his godless Commie guts all over Gólgota. If it even gets that far. You going to be there to hear his confession, sir?”
“No, I’ve got to get things battened down over on Balbal. We may receive an attack at any moment. We’ve lost two Thunders already, that’s a quarter of a million in U.S. dollars. Apiece. Our budget is stretched to the limit. Over the limit, come to think of it. What with the empty run you made to Ko Kut last week. I hope Hughes made the pickup all right this time. Any word from him?”
“No sir. Remember you ordered radio silence after I messaged him with the rendezvous fix? He’s due back tonight, tomorrow morning at the latest.”
“He’d goddamn well better make it,” the commo said, “or I’ll bust him back to—” Wait a minute, he thought.
“To what sir?” Billy Torres asked. “Civilian?”
Candelario de Mactan had the night watch, and he didn’t like it. He was a big man. Big men get cold faster than little men. There was more of them exposed to the wind. He didn’t like the wind blowing down from Gólgota. It blew through the ruined garden that surrounded the chapel and brought him the smell of dying flowers and cold marble. It brought him the smell of those crooked crosses on the hilltop. He didn’t like to look up, unthinking, and suddenly see them there outlined against the cold moon. Yet he couldn’t keep himself from staring up at them. He forced himself to look away, and then he was staring at the mask. He didn’t like the mask at all. It was the face of the centurion Longinus, who had killed Our Lord. A cruel, black-bearded face with only one eye.
Don’t be foolish, Candelario told himself. It’s only a mask. The fact that it has only one eye does not mean it will take the sight from one of my own eyes. I am not a savage, I am a descendant of Lapu Lapu, the king of Mactan who killed the evil invader Magellan in the surf of the Mactan Sea. All men of Mactan are Lapu’s sons. The mask looks like Magellan’s face, on the monument at home. But Lapu Lapu stands as big as life, bigger than life, high above Magellan, whom he killed with one stroke of his bolo. Even though I must wear the mask tomorrow—today, really, in only ten hours or so—it will not make me Magellan. I am working for the men who will kill today’s Magellans. Who knows, perhaps I myself will be the one to behead the commodore, Magellan’s heir.
But still he was cold.
He could hear the padre inside the chapel, hearing the confession of the captured Moro. He had not realized Moros believed in confession. It was warm in the capilla. The padre had brought coffee. Candelario could smell it on the warm air from the chapel window. He stepped closer to breathe the coffee smell more deeply. A man could take sustenance from smells alone.
“When you sought me that day on Siquijor,” the padre was saying, “you brought me fresh hope, my son.”
“And I brought this upon myself,” Effredio said bitterly. They were speaking the heavy Visayan dialect of Negros, which neither Candelario nor any other of the commodore’s guards could penetrate.
“Don’t despair, my son,” Padre Cotinho said. “You’ll be safe, as safe as any of us. I’ll arrange it. It’s all being arranged. But you must not talk. They will not harm you. The commodore will not permit it. Like all Americans, he is soft at the core. Torres for all his cruelty obeys the commodore’s orders. He must obey them. He is a slave of the Americans. Never fear. There is always hope.”
“Not on that, there isn’t,” Effredio said. He was staring out the lancet window at a cross on Gólgota.
“There is always hope in the cross, my son,” Padre Cotinho said. “It is my hope—no, it is my certainty—that you will find it up there.”
Effredio was quiet for a minute.
“I have sinned, Padre,” he said at last. “Bless me.”
Padre Cotinho embraced him, kissed him on both cheeks. Effredio’s cheeks were wet. The padre poured him another cup of coffee from the thermos he had brought with him. Some slopped over, onto his hand. He handed the metal cup to Effredio, then with his wet thumb traced a cross lightly on Effredio’s brow. He stood back, smiling, and traced a larger cross in the air.
On his way out a few minutes later he handed Candelario the last of the coffee, and took him aside.
“Today, as Longinus,” he said, “you will place the lance deeply and accurately. The man within is a traitor to our cause. Yet though he has betrayed us, I do not want him to suffer. You will use the spear before they nail him to the cross. Make sure of your thrust, compañero. Comprende?”
Candelario nodded. He always obeyed orders. He appreciated the gesture of the coffee. The padre was a good leader.
TWENTY-SIX
The old imperial navy submarine pens had been blasted out of dead coral and roofed with reinforced concrete, then layered with loose coral rubble and sand. Now, nearly half a century later, they were invisible from land, sea, or air. Cactus and wire grass covered them on top while clever jogs in the entrance channel disguised their hidden gates. Inside, though, they were brightly lighted by the power of generators, clanking and howling with activity. Sôbô had found a few of his old crew from the destroyer Yunagi to serve as foremen. The younger Japanese machinists and construction workers were the most skilled he had been able to locate. All were eager for the job—a chance to travel to forbidding but exotic tropical isles. Good pay, too. And plenty of cut-rate sex. They’d done a crackerjack job. Renovations on the schooner Venganza were nearly complete. Sôbô had thanked the men personally and distributed bottles of sake to the foremen for immediate (but moderate) consumption. He himself would not stay for the toasts—just for the first one—which he pretended to drink—Banzai!—but spilled on the floor instead. Then he went topside.
Cool and quiet in the sea air of the midwatch. He walked down to the mole, breathing deeply. The moon—just its last waning sliver—already touched the western horizon. A million stars. The respirating sea on the fringing reef sounded a steady thud and hiss. He sat on a bollard and reviewed his battle plan for the hundredth, the thousandth time. He told himself again it would work.
First, he would neutralize the San Lázaro boat facility by filling its channel with shallow-anchored contact mines—not the huge and obvious ones he’d found in abundance in the sub base’s armory, but the small antiboat mines. They would be seeded from kumpits so as to be indistinguishable from the customary Lázaran harbor traffic. A few well-armed pump boats would lie off to destroy any Blue Thunders that might manage to escape.
Second, Balabatchi on Moro Armado would free the political prisoners, killing whatever recalcitrant Tausuq guards did not agree to his change of colors. Two yakuza, perhaps three of the six Sôbô had with him, would assist Bala. Kumpits and pump boats would ferry the freed prisoners—at least the most influential of them—to Lázaro City, where they would spread the news of the revolt. In concert with Padre Cotinho’s agitators, they would provoke a rising on Lázaro proper. That rising need not necessarily prevail. The tumult it caused would be diversion enough for Sôbô’s purposes, pinning down whatever land force Millikan had on the main island.
Third, and most important, Sergeant Grande’s Negritos would assault the Balbal base from the rear. This attack would occur simultaneously with the San Lázaro rising, further confusing the enemy, getting him to look behind him rather than toward the sea. Pump boats and the faster kumpits would, at the same time, have landed men on the Balbal base’s right and left flanks, attacking along the shore.
Once that preliminary phase of the Balbal assault was well under way, the real battle would begin. Venganza and her escort of pump boats would approach from the sea and take the base under fire. Millikan would of course retaliate with artillery and his fast boats at first, then, as they were destroyed in detail, he would be forced to sortie his gunboat. Venganza would look like an easy target—a flimsy wooden-hulled vessel that could scarcely move faster than a man walking at a brisk pace. Millikan was in for a surprise . . .
Sôbô heard footsteps in the crushed coral. It was Culdee.
“Couldn’t sleep,” he said. “Saw you down here and thought I’d join you.” He had two mugs in his hands. “Want some jamoke? I went back to the galley and got you one.”
“Thanks, old-timer,” Sôbô said. He sipped the hot coffee—the U.S. Navy’s fighting blood. “Beautiful night.”
“Ugly day ahead,” Culdee said. “Ugly days, I should say.”
“I never could sleep, myself, when I knew it was coming,” Sôbô said.
“You’ve seen more of it than I have. A helluva lot more.”
“It’s always the same, except for the details,” Sôbô said. “But not to worry. Once it starts, you’re into it, and you feel nothing but the weapons.”
“What sort of missile system is that in the Thunders?”
“FIM-43A,” Sôbô said. “American-built Redeye. Nothing to fear, really. It’s a surface-to-air system, shoulder-fired and long since outdated. Both your Stinger and the British Blowpipe are far superior. I expect poor Millikan gets the scrapings from the bottom of the U.S. Navy’s ordnance barrel.”
“Redeye,” Culdee said. “It’s a heat-seeker, isn’t it?”
“Infrared, actually. Its sensors lock onto the aircraft’s exhaust emissions. I don’t think a pump boat’s engine would be hot enough to attract it, and anyway, an outboard’s exhaust is at or below the waterline. Redeye’s red eye would be stymied in any event. It couldn’t see through waves even if it were sensitive to a Yamaha’s exhaust.”
“Redeye,” Culdee said again. “I could use a slug of that stuff right about now.” He took a long swallow of coffe instead. “So the missile system won’t help him against us. So what do we do about the fast boats? About the gunboat?”
“Outgun them,” Sôbô said. “Come with me.” He led the way back into the submarine pens. Culdee saw dozens of Japanese in coveralls working under bright lights, heard the hammer of pneumatic wrenches and drills, saw the glint of gun barrels in the glare. Back at the far end of the pens a long, low, filthy, wooden-decked vessel of some sort was receiving a lot of attention. The boat looked like an outsized kumpit. It had no bowsprit or masts, just a series of sawed-off stumps where they once had been.
Walking past the boat, they came to a tunnel. Sôbô led the way past Moro and Japanese sentries to a huge steel door. It sighed as he turned the dogs securing it—airtight. Inside he turned on the lights. Culdee caught his breath.
The lights illuminated row on row of neatly stowed weapons—racks of gleaming torpedos; nests of spike-armed mines, some big enough to sink battleships; a whole wall stacked high with ammunition boxes; stands of rifles; fully assembled heavy machine guns, glowing on the concrete decks. All the boxes, all the gear for that matter, bore Japanese lettering.
“Who the hell financed this?” he asked.
“The emperor,” Sôbô replied. “When he was much younger, of course. This is the old sub base armory, unseen by human eyes, untouched by human hands, unsullied by salty sea air since the day back in the winter of 1944 when the base was overrun by the first Millikan’s guerrillas and abandoned.”
“How come the guerrillas didn’t get in here? They could’ve used this stuff.”
“The base commander mined the entrance,” Sôbô said. “After a few dozen Tausuqs flew off to join Allah, the rest gave it up. The war was winding down, anyway. We had to excavate tons of rubble ourselves before we found it. I lost some men in the digging. It was worth it, though. Now our small craft are armed with these—” H
e slapped a drum-fed machine gun with a big spider-web-shaped forward sight and a heavy water-cooled cylinder of a barrel. “IJN Type-92, 7.7 millimeter copy of the old Lewis gun. Five hundred rounds per minute at twenty-four hundred feet per second from the muzzle. Slow but steady. It’s the old British .303 cartridge, probably the deadliest bullet ever manufactured, when you reckon all the wars it’s been in. Very reliable. Some of the larger vessels will mount these.” He had moved on to a shorter-barreled, air-cooled machine gun with a short wooden stock and knurled, straight pistol grip. It was mounted on an adjustable monopod that could be fixed to a deck. Its feed was a curved magazine that fit on top of the receiver. “Type 93, 13.2 millimeters—about .50 caliber as you people compute bullet diameters—well capable of chewing up a fast boat and spitting it out all over the sea. My gunners have trained our pump-boat crews on these weapons for more than a month now. They are handy with weapons, these Moros—with all deadly implements. And they are not afraid to die.”
“Neither are Millikan’s Muslims.”
“Perhaps,” Sôbô said. “But they are paid to die. Our men kill and die for love.”
“We’ll see,” Culdee said finally. “But .50-caliber mgs won’t stop that gunboat. She’s got three-inch guns. If I remember correctly, a three-incher can hit up to three or four miles out. These guns can’t.”
“In the fullness of time, old chap,” Sôbô said, turning toward the door. “All in the fullness of the time. Take my word for it, the Good Lord will provide.”
Billy Torres stood near the top of Gólgota watching the procession approach. The doleful chant had been thrumming its way up from the harbor for nearly an hour now, the parade’s caterpillarlike progress preceded by heady fumes of burning incense and the crack of leather whips. All around him old women wailed and swayed to the swaying of the crosses—side to side, up and down. He watched as the crosses jutted above the red hoods and rhythmically cracking whips of the flagellants and the bobbing heads of the crowd. There were four crosses, Billy saw. Three volunteers and the so-called Kasim. Kasim had joined the others under close guard when the procession reached the chapel in the garden, which the islanders called Getsemani. Billy had interrogated him just minutes before the procession arrived. The man had looked too weak to make a battle of it, but he wouldn’t talk. Billy left him unmanacled during their little chat, and when he raised his SP nightstick, Kasim cowered.
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