Blood Tide

by Robert F. Jones

  The line payed out to its hitch on the bitt. When it reached its stop, it tightened hard and fast, yanking Turner out of the boat. The coaming smashed him hard in the ribs, and he felt them snap. He was in the water, tied, kicking, the fires blazing all around him. Cold water, hot flames . . .

  Culdee took the cap in his left hand. He still had all his fingers there, port side present and accounted for, sir. He thumbed back the stiff hammer until it clicked and locked. He stuck the cap on the punt gun’s nipple. He raised the heavy wooden butt to his shoulder. The trigger, thick and cold, felt slippery—blood from his right hand. He put his remaining fingers on it and sighted down the barrel. Turner was thrashing in the glare of the burning ships. Culdee held on him. Something exploded up in the schooner’s bow, and from the corner of his eye he saw the ship rat go over the side, swimming toward a smoldering spar. Sinking ship . . .

  Turner was drowning. His lungs ached, his eyes stung from fire and salt. He couldn’t loosen the grip of Culdee’s noose. He kicked frantically, trying to keep his head above water. Then he heard Culdee yelling to him, and he felt his ears pop clear for an instant. He saw Culdee looking down the barrel of an immense gun, Culdee’s eyes locked hard on him, the flicker of light on a cocked hammer.

  “Turner!” Culdee’s voice was louder than the explosions that racked both ships. “This is for the Dune!”

  The hammer fell. The cap popped. The half pound of black powder exploded . . .

  Turner screamed . . .

  Through the smoke Culdee saw the charge slash the water all around Turner’s head and shoulders, saw Turner lift from the weight of fast-moving shot as it tore through his body. He saw the red and white lace of the shot against the black flickering sea, the sea red and yellow with the dance of flames, and the deeper red boil of water around Turner’s shredded body. Ammunition was exploding all around Culdee now, skittering off at odd angles, red, white, yellow, hissing and roaring. He saw something dark flash fast through the boil of red water where Turner was. A hunk of wreckage? Too fast. It turned, returned. A triangular dorsal fin.

  At that moment the flames reached the satchel charge. As it exploded, Culdee felt himself go off through the air, torn apart by its blast, a man in many pieces.

  Billy Torres knelt in the gunboat’s scuppers. He couldn’t stand now, his legs limp from loss of blood. And around him were dead men, fire, broken weapons. His eyes wept from the heat of the flames.

  The commodore was dead. Billy had seen him blown apart by gunfire from the sinking schooner. He felt guilty—he should have gone over there. The commodore wasn’t a bad man. Just a fool.

  The fires crackled louder, grumbling deep in the gunboat’s innards, a ship of death, sinking.

  Something growled, more ominous than the fires, growled in the dark behind him. Billy turned and stared. It was the horror of his life.

  The dog came fast into the firelight, too fast for Billy to fire his pistol. It knocked him flat on the deck, ripped at his throat and face. Billy pressed the pistol against its hot belly and fired. The dog bit harder. Something ripped. He threw the dog from him, screaming.

  Kasim stepped out of the dark and swung his bolo. The head rolled free, down the canted deck. It had no face. The dog had taken it.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Miranda heard the Moro Armada roll over. The groans and snaps and creaking of her final moments as she broke up came loud and clear over the water. She saw her fires disappear in the quenching wash of the sea. A great gulping belching sound followed, and one last fire on the gunboat’s bow flared briefly, then died. But fires still raged on the Venganza as she lay mortally wounded in the dark. No one could live in that inferno. Miranda heard small-arms ammunition cooking off on deck and down below, then saw a great yellow-red flash as something powerful exploded. The roar hammered her ringing ears. Maybe Culdee’s black powder cans? Whatever it was finished the schooner. The level line of the fires whose smoke and glare obscured her sight of the ship itself began to assume a stern-high angle. She was sinking at the bow, and as the fires died one by one at the touch of the sea, Miranda could just make out the huge ragged shot holes in her sides, the 4.7-inch deck gun lying smashed and barrel-bent on the forward hatchcover. Her whole stern section seemed to have been shot away, or was clinging to the remainder of the hull only by a few splintered deck planks. As her angle steepened, wrecked gear and bodies skidded forward, some toppling limply over the side. Something heavy broke loose below decks and grated forward, roaring. The engine. As the glare lessened, Miranda could see triangular dorsal fins circling at the wavery edge of the light. She had to look away.

  When she looked back, the ship was gone. Only shattered flotsam bobbed in the dark, some wood, some flesh.

  Her eyes stung suddenly, then blurred with the tears. She wanted to cry out aloud, but she wouldn’t. If she let go now, she did’t know what might happen. She had to hold on. She had to get out of there.

  Then she saw Curt lying smashed and limp on the cockpit deck. His head was propped against the gunwale and lay at an odd angle to his shoulders. At first she thought he was dead, but when she drew closer, she could see a pulse beating weakly at the root of his throat. She eased him out flat on the deck and propped his head on a life preserver. The sky was lightening now to the east, and she was able to examine his wounds. The most obvious was a long, deep gash across the side of his head that was still seeping blood through its dark clots. His hair was stiff and sticky with blood, and she could see the gleam of white bone at the bottom of the gash. A shell splinter? Who could tell? Who cared? She tore off the sleeve of his shirt and bound it tight around the gash.

  Then she pulled off the rest of his shirt and cutoffs. He was studded with splinters all down his right side, and there were flash burns, puffed and watery, across his chest and stomach. Small dark-blue holes dotted his left thigh, but when she probed it, the bone didn’t feel broken. Shrapnel. She’d have to dig it out with the forceps in her medical kit. She ducked down the companionway and found the kit after a brief search. Topside again, she opened it. Good. He hadn’t marketed the morphine. There were half a dozen Syrettes nested in cotton wool. He’d need them once she turned to with the forceps. She found burn ointment and plastered his blisters with it, then squeezed some onto bandages and taped them down over the burns. With the forceps she began pulling splinters. She was careful, as gentle as she could be, but he began to moan, then twist away from her. His eyes popped open—wide, wild, out of focus. He tried to talk, but his mouth was like glue. He could only mutter a bit, still out of it. One particularly stubborn splinter brought a yelp from him, and he passed out again.

  As the light strengthened, Miranda went to work on the shrapnel holes. That yanked him ragingly awake, screaming and fighting with an impossible strength. She slapped him hard and pinned him down on the deck.

  “Stopping yapping, you shit heel,” she said. “I ought to dump you over the side with the other stiffs. Don’t give me a hard time.”

  He looked up at her, fully conscious for the first time. “Why’re you doing this, then?” he said in a raw, croaking voice.

  “Just shut up. I’m going to shoot you full of morphine now so I can get this metal out of you. Then I’m going to stitch up your head. What comes later, I don’t know yet.”

  She uncapped a Syrette, checked to make sure there was no air in the hypodermic and popped it into his arm. Then she went below to boil up some water for tea.

  When she came topside with it, he was asleep. Good. She’d made only tea enough for herself.

  She was tying off the last stitches in his head wound, having cleaned it thoroughly with cotton soaked in hydrogen peroxide, when she heard an outboard motor chugging at low revs in the distance. When she looked up, the horizon had closed in to no more than fifty yards. Sea smoke lay thick and gray on the waves. The motor was closing on her. She grabbed the AK and ducked down behind the gunwale. When the boat sounded close enough, she eased her head up and stared into th
e fog. It crept out slowly, bow on in her direction. A pump boat. Ours or theirs? She slipped the safety off and checked to see that there was a round in the chamber. There was.

  The pump boat plugged its way toward her, cautiously. She raised the rifle and slid it over the gunwale, sighting down the stubby blue barrel. Then she heard a bark. Brillo! The man at the tiller stood up. It was Kasim. She rose and waved to him with the rifle. Brillo barked twice more, his tail swinging hard and fast.

  “Ah, you live!” Kasim cried. “Milagro de Dios! We both live is a miracle of Allah.” He tied up at the taffrail and swung aboard. His shirt was holed and bloodstained, and his arms were blistered. Two fingers were gone from his left hand—just black stumps where he’d stuck them in hot tar to stop the bleeding. Kasim embraced her powerfully with his good arm, a double abrazo, his eyes gleaming with tears and his smile threatening to split his burned face open. Brillo went over and sniffed Curt. Miranda could see singed patches of fur along his back and down three legs, and already clotted blood on his neck and haunches. She’d have to patch him up, too. And Kasim.

  “No,” Kasim said when she reached for the burn ointment. “You must go now, not waste time here. Capitán Katana dead now. You father he dead, too. Millikan dead. Torres dead. Many my men dead. Many, many their men dead. But Padre Cotinho live still. Un hombre muy engaño, muy perfidio—very tricky. You sail east. Go home now.”

  “Come with me,” she said. “I’ll bring you back to Jolo.”

  “No, gracias. I must stay at this place, gather my few men, see to their hurts. I must make certain Padre Cotinho does no treacheries.” The sea smoke was thinning. They both looked south toward Mount Haplit and the slopes of San Lázaro. “This place my home for a while now already,” he said.

  “I must search for my father,” Miranda said.

  “Inútil,” Kasim said. “Useless. He is muerto, dead with his ship. I see, I know. Capitán Katana as well. You must go now, go east, away, fast. Padre may want you dead, too. Newspapers like that much better, you dead. Let him even believe so already. I tell him you ship, she sink, too. You dead, that man—El Brusco—he too is dead.” He gestured toward Curt. Miranda looked toward him.

  “No, Brillo!” The dog was cocking his leg over Curt’s head. He stalked stiffly away and lay down on the cabin roof.

  Kasim laughed.

  Miranda burst into tears. It all came pouring out now, all the awfulness, the fear and the anger and the unforgettable memory, images burned forever into her mind—shells bursting, boats exploding, great sudden gouts of flame, torn bodies sprawling like bloody waste rags—the horror. . . . Kasim embraced her with both arms, held her hard and tight against his chest. He was weeping, too.

  “It is always forever ugly,” he said at last. “But you must sail, hija. You are my daughter of battle now. My daughter, now. And you must live.” He kissed her gently on the eyes. Then he was gone. She looked up and saw the pump boat disappearing into the last wisps of sea smoke, toward San Lázaro.

  His voice came through the fog one last time. “Allah akhbar!”

  She went forward to make sail.

  By late afternoon the islands had sunk below the western horizon. Not even Haplit’s blue volcanic banner could be seen on the wind. Seamark was making good speed across the Sulu. The hawk winds had abated, the baba del diablo blown itself out, and a freshening breeze from the southwest filled Seamark’s sails to a hard, muscular tautness. It was the southwest monsoon, Miranda knew, a bit early this year, but the sea and its weathers kept no firm schedules. The wind gods had blessed her, and she was grateful.

  Then Curt awakened. She had dragged a spare mattress topside and rolled him onto it, rigged a tarp for a sunshade. He looked at her from his blankets, unsmiling, almost puzzled.

  “Why are you doing this?” he asked at last. “You still don’t owe me.”

  “Damned right I don’t,” she said. She eased the helm to a following wave. The seas were rising. “This yawl rig was a good idea,” she said, looking back at the small triangular kicker sail. “She damn near steers herself now, if I tie down the helm at the right degree.” She tied it down, then went below to make some tea. When she came back, she had two mugs. She handed one to Curt.

  “Thanks.” He tried to sip from it, and tea slopped onto his chest. He winced when the hot liquid touched one of his burns. He switched the tea to the other hand. The cup still shook, but less wildly now. “I don’t get it,” he said. “You could have deep-sixed me back there, and you’d have been within your rights.”

  She stared at him and took a swallow of her tea. Her eyes were hard, her mouth set firmly.

  “I figured it out while you slept off the morphine,” she said finally. “Four options open to me. I could have killed you right then when we took you—I know how to do it now, learned a lot about killing these past few days. But frankly I’ve seen enough death to last me the rest of my life. Don’t think I wouldn’t, though, if I felt I had to.” She slapped the stock of the AK racked against the gunwale.

  “Two, I could have taken you back to Lázaro, or had Kasim take you when he brought Brillo back. Let Padre Cotinho dispose of you as he saw fit. Or stayed on myself, and with Kasim’s help become the new Commodore Millikan. Kind of a Pasionária of the rebel pirates. But that’s not for me. I’m no revolutionary, whatever the cause. And it would tie me to the land. I’m for the sea, always have been. At any rate, Cotinho would have disposed of you for me in either case.”

  She drank some more tea. Brillo came aft at the mention of his name. Miranda scratched him behind the ears, and he grumbled happily.

  “Look at that,” she said. “Your dog loves me more than he ever loved you. I had to keep him from peeing on you this morning when you were out of it. That leads me to three. I could just drop you on Perniciosa, with your wounds, no money, no boat. Not even your dog for company. Very tempting. A nice unity to it. Turnabout is fair play, after all. It’s just what you did to me in Mexico back then. I liked that idea very much, but even then it wouldn’t undo all the hurt you’ve laid on me. And on my dad.”

  He wanted to tell her the truth—that he’d done all this under orders, for the good of mankind, that he was one of the good guys who’d sacrificed a normal, decent life to risk everything for his country. But he didn’t really believe that himself—his motives were based more on excitement than altruism—and anyway, he’d tried to tell her once already, when he thought she was about to kill him. It hadn’t worked then, and even if it did now, it wouldn’t matter to Miranda. Nor could he really blame her.

  “Where is your dad?” he asked finally.

  “He’s dead. Went down with his ship.” She laughed bitterly, then lashed the wheel again and went below. He could hear the clatter of crockery in the galley, then the whistle of the tea kettle. Her eyes were red and wet from tears when she returned. “I don’t know,” she said, “it’s how he wanted it, I guess. Fire and smoke. Kind of a Viking funeral. But he got what he came for. He got his revenge.” She shrugged.

  The sun was sinking fast now toward an empty horizon.

  “So what’s option number four?” Curt asked.

  “What I’m doing,” she said. “I’ll carry you as far as Zambo or Davao. Get you to a hospital, where they can patch you up. Then you’re on your own. Once you’re all better, you’ll find some scam to work, I’m sure. Some other dumb babe to mess up.”

  “Hey,” he objected, “you’re no dumb babe. Look, I really felt—”

  “Oh, shut up! You’re a lying, conniving bastard, and you always were. You always will be. Even if you are some kind of undercover cop, you’re still a shit. I suppose it’s the nature of the work, part of the job description. You’re good at it, I’ll give you that.” She kicked him sharply on his wounded leg. He almost yelled out from the sharpness of the pain but bit it off, went bone white under his tan.

  “Okay,” he said after a while. “You’re entitled. Can’t blame you a bit. But whether you believe it or n
ot, I am a cop. And you’re right, camouflage is the most important part of the game. But I’m getting out of the game after this one. I don’t expect you to turn cartwheels with joy at that announcement, but just consider this. I’m a quick healer. By the time we get to Zambo or wherever, I probably won’t need a doctor. I could crew for you on the way back across. You’ll need an extra hand to work your way north to the forties and the westerlies. The monsoon season’s just getting started—heavy weather ahead. And you’ve always got option number one still open.”

  Miranda stared at him for a long time. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “We’ll see.”

  The sun was nearly down now, an orange ball of fire balanced on the rim of the sea—a funeral pyre consuming the dead of the Flyaway Islands.

  “I’ll cook us some supper,” she said. She lashed the wheel and went below.

  * * *

  Far to the west the sea lay littered with the wreckage of battle. Sharks tore at the few remaining bodies they found. Smoldering spars floated spluttering on the waves. Isla Perniciosa loomed dark against the sunset. A charred hatch cover drifted on the current toward the beach near the sub base. The ship rat perched on it, singed and bloody but still alive.

  When the hatch cover neared the shore, the rat slipped off and swam through the chop. Ashore, he shook himself dry. Far up the beach wild dogs were eating something large and gray. The rat sniffed the air, then scuttled silently up toward the wire grass. He sniffed again. Yes. Another rat, a female, in heat . . .

  He ran west into the night. Behind him in the seaward dark, gallows birds swung low on stiff wings above the waves, their cries wild and mournful over the thud of the surf.