Assignment - Sulu Sea

by Edward S. Aarons

  “We have to go back. It means somebody is coming—a party of Ch’ing’s men, probably. They‘ve chased me before. That’s Malachy’s signal that they can see someone.”

  Durell said: “Holcomb’s body isn’t here. Are you sure this is where you buried him?”

  “It’s the spot. Maybe a bit to the left, but—we’ve got to run for it, Samuel.”

  “Not yet.” He kept digging. “Better swim now, Willi.”

  The Tarakuta was moving, her anchor up again, sailing slowly east just ofi the barrier reef. The girl stood beside him, swinging her mask impatiently, nervously.

  “Samuel, please. I’m not going to leave you here alone."

  “I'm not going back to the schooner, Willi. But you’d better, if there’s trouble coming, as you say.”

  “I won’t leave you,” she said stubbornly.

  He was sure now that the jeep tracks had been made by a disinterment party, and Pete Holcomb‘s remains were removed forever from the sight of men. But you don’t shed tears over the dead, he thought grimly, since the losers were usually the careless or the weak. Sometimes a man was lost by treachery, or because the enemy was smarter and more professional. Even so, you did not stop to mourn the fallen, and he did not mourn for Peter Holcomb. But he meant to learn why and how he died.

  The girl‘s shadow fell from behind him upon the empty grave. The monkeys in the jungle screeched in derision. From far down the white beach came the sound of a laboring engine.

  “Sam, someone is coming.”

  He had only the entrenching tool as a weapon. The Tarakuta was still lingering in the channel, mirror signal flashing. Willi’s mouth tightened when he urged her toward the water.

  “I won’t go back to the schooner without you."

  “I’m not going back just yet,” Durell said. “Has the Tarakuta ever been allowed in Ch‘ing’s tin port?”

  “No, but—”

  "The only way in is by crossing the island?”

  “Or going along the shore. But—”

  “Then we’ll decide which route to take later. Let old Joseph sail off. He won’t go far,” Durell said. “It will make them think he’s just passing by.”

  The girl looked askance at their tracks on the sand. “But they’ll see our trail, Sam.”

  “Can’t be helped. If you won’t swim back, come along with me. There’s no other place to go.”

  He took her hand and they ran for the wall of brilliant, oppressive green that fought for possession of the beach. The whining of the jeep grew louder, woven through the surf’s thunder and the endless screeches of birds and monkeys. It was like diving into another kind of sea as they plunged past the line of coco palms into this World of clinging, rank growth. If he thought the beach had been hot, he found here a breathless, steamy weight that was like a viscous curtain impossible to shred and throw off. Their pace slowed at once. The girl ran beside him, carrying their flippers, masks and tanks. They were useless burdens, however. He could been here before. And I’m better off with you than hiding in the swamps.”

  A rifle shot ended the conversation of the birds overhead. The monkeys screamed and turned into small brown streaks heading inland along the branched avenues above. Fine pollen dust, a stray orchid, and butterflies made a tangle of disorienting, blinding color. The shot came again. The girl moved nearer and her warm, naked thigh pressed against his.

  “They’re shooting at shadows,” he said. “But they know we’re here.”

  She nodded. “They can find us, too. Some of the Hakka mine workers are good trackers. They’re nothing more than indentured servants, and some of them run off and have to be caught again.”

  “Shades of the Old South,” Durell murmured.

  “It isn’t funny.”

  “It never was. Do you know your way around here?”

  Her eyes were angry. “Did you get me ashore just to use me as a guide? If I’d known you meant to stay—”

  “We’re here, and We might as Well try to survive,” he suggested. “I didn’t think the patrol would come along as soon as it did, but in any case, We’re stuck. I’d prefer not to have to worry about you, Willi, but since you passed up the chance to swim back to the schooner, let’s try to get along, shall we?”

  She drew a. deep breath. “All right. I’m not much of a guide, though. Old Joseph knows Bangka best. He was a coast watcher here during World War II, against the Japanese. He spoke pidgin to the sons of the samurai, and they simply thought he was a misplaced Polynesian ignoramus. But they caught Mother and Dad." She shivered suddenly. “Father was beheaded, on the beach. Mother died that night, in their camp. But they didn’t connect old Joseph, and let him stay on. He helped the U.S. Marines when they landed here from the Celebes. Before that, Joseph helped downed flyers to hide in the rain forest. To get to Ch’ing’s port, as I said, you either have to go by the beach perimeter, or across the mountain and through the rain jungle. Both are equally dangerous.” She spoke with sudden violence. “Don’t be sympathetic, please! I couldn’t bear it. The Japanese are gone and the coast watchers are forgotten. Today the Chinese are here, and most of them are decent people, but they send their dead back to China for burial in enormous mahogany coffins, and they still buy their wives from among young Chinese not have concealed in time the disturbance he’d made hunting for Holcomb’s grave. The people in the jeep would know at a glance that someone was ashore, not yesterday or the day before, but right now. He smelled danger, and did not like it. Neither did he like the responsibility he now had for Willi Panapura‘s safety. It was not as if she were in his business and knew the risks and chances to be taken. She was an innocent bystander in this, and he could not help but feel that her safety must he considered above his own.

  They ran for several minutes, then he checked her and they sank to their knees behind a vine of thick, spotted leaves, with a rank windfall of blown sago palms beyond them. Water trickled slowly somewhere. The light was bilious, filtering from an enormous, violently yellow sun beyond the tall, towering vegetation. The heat clamped iron hands on his throat and he breathed quickly and lightly, as if strangled. Sweat made his torso slick. The girl’s body glistened and wavered as she shifted her weight on her near-naked haunches.

  “Listen,” he said.

  The jeep had stopped. They could not see it, but voices chattered as high and unintelligibly as the invisible monkeys, excited and disputatious. Then a deeper voice spoke out sharply and there was silence.

  “That’s Cantonese, so they’re Hakka people—Prince Ch’ing’s men. He patrols the beaches regularly,” Willi said.

  “Has he ever explained such passion for privacy?”

  “Well, he owns most of Bangka—this beach and the tin mines and the port over the mountains.”

  “I wish I could fly with you in the amphib over this precious piece of real estate,” Durell said.

  “I did that yesterday, when I left you at Pandakan.”

  Willi’s long, golden hair had come loose again, and swung like cables of honey. She found a pin in it and piled it up once more to keep her neck cool. The gesture was pure and beautiful, an utterly feminine maneuver. "I saw nothing unusual. I went up and down the beaches and around the whole island perimeter. I certainly didn’t spot a Polaris sub. There’s only the old tramp freighter loading tin ore at Prince Ch’ing‘s private little port.”

  “I’d like to have a look at it. But I’d like to find a safe place to put you, Willi, while I do so.”

  She sniffed. “I don‘t see how the sub can be here, and if you'd hinted to Joseph you meant to stay ashore, he'd never have agreed. But you don’t have to worry about me. I’ve girls back in the home village. Except for the Hakka laborers, most of them are small merchants in tin shacks among the Malays, and they’re friendly and dependable, mostly, except here on Bangka. If you want to know if I can navigate here, yes, I can. I’ve seen old Joseph’s maps made when he was a coast watcher, since I was knee-high to a crocodile. Parts of this islan
d are deadly, but we can get to this port that interests you so much. But I just don‘t like going around undressed like this.”

  “Let’s worry about our skins literally, Willi. Joseph won’t abandon us. The schooner will never be far off.”

  “I suppose you counted on that, too, when you decided to stay ashore!” She bit her lip. “The poor old man will be wild with worry. And Malachy—oh, everything is such a mess!”

  He was concerned about her nerves, but his own worry was like a toothache as they trotted away from the beach. He had no weapon, but he could fashion one, when needed. And he guessed the need would come sooner than anticipated.

  They left their useless tanks and flippers hidden in the undergrowth and went barefoot across the rough husks of fallen coconut fibers. He thought of snakes, of scorpions, of all manner of stinging, venomous things. But the tall golden girl led the way with quick assurance, along a path he could not see. From behind them came thrashing noises of clumsy pursuit. A rifle cracked again, and he wondered if one of the little monkeys was the victim. He could see nothing beyond a few feet of the wall of green vegetation that, humid and dripping, closed around them.

  The wildness was deceptive, however. The island was not as pagan or wild as it seemed. They came upon a rutted wagon road before they put another hundred yards between them and the distantly muttering surf, turned, and followed it. The primitive plant life of the beach yielded to savannah grass for a short time; the palms, pandanus and mangroves disappeared. Then there was forest again, but with a rich insanity of orchids, insects, and mutated shrubs that defied the imagination. The trees were huge, draped with vines, brilliantly flowered. The road cut through a coconut plantation, heavy with silent heat, and then came to an open field and a paddy irrigated from a system of neat trenches. Beyond the field was a mat hut built on crazily leaning stilts above the soft, uncertain matting of rotted vegetation on the ground. The thatched roof was shaded by tall teak trees wreathed in tough wakurikuri vines. Wild banana trees stood in a thick grove on a slope of land beyond the rice paddy, and the fallen fruit, many inches deep on the soil, gave off a rich, aromatic pungency. The only sound was a single, sudden, sharp shriek of a parakeet.

  It was the first open glimpse of the island Durell had seen since his view of Bangka from the sea. The interior peak towered black against the white-hot sky, with only the perpetual trade-wind cloud clinging to the top of the extinct volcanic cone. The moment he stopped to consider the rice paddy, insects collected in stinging, biting, chewing, crawling swarms.

  Then Willi clutched his hand and he heard the creaking of a bullock cart coming along the road. Thrashing sounds from the pursuit party heading inland were suddenly louder. If they ran across the field, the sight of two nearly naked Westerners would surprise the bullock driver out of his wits, and certainly bring the chase party hot on their heels. He felt trapped. Then he nodded briefly to the tall girl beside him.

  “Stay here, Willi.”

  “Please, Sam—”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  The cart came into sight, the heavy beasts slow and plodding, their hoofs peculiarly light in the track. A scowling young Chinese in a blue jumper spattered with mud and dung drove the cart. His broad face was irritated and angry under a wide coolie hat of woven pandanus. At the sound of another random shot, he looked toward the jungle growth near the beach, but not where Durell and Willi crouched in hiding. He flicked a long whip over the bullocks’ haunches and the huge animals lumbered on at an infinitesimally faster pace.

  Durell ran at a crouch behind a screen of vines, came out on the road six feet behind the cart, and jumped for the hulking young Chinese. The man’s squawk of alarm was cut off by a hard jab in his throat by Durell’s stiffened fingers; his black eyes were wide for an instant at the sight of Durell, nearly naked in his skin-diving suit, and then they glazed over and he toppled unconscious from the cart seat. Durell leaped down after him, not wasting a single motion, and dragged him out of sight into the brush. He could only hope that luck would keep the coolie out of the enemy‘s way. Then he yelled at the bollocks and as they lumbered forward toward the house on its stilts at the other end of the field, Willi came streaking from the jungle and landed on the seat beside him.

  The cart’s contents of fertilizer were not the most fragrant cargo they might have carried. The lumbering bullocks, their dim senses stirred to vague alarm, moved at a faster pace toward the hut. Durell urged them on, and when they turned automatically into a lean-to shed, he jumped off, grabbed Willi and swung her clear and into the doorway of the farmer‘s hut just as a party of excited, armed men burst into the clearing across from them.

  chapter fifteen

  BY GOOD chance, the Chinese farmer had no wife, or if he had, she was working elsewhere. The hut was empty. A bamboo ladder led them at breakneck pace onto a tiny verandah and into the hot, shadowed interior. The floor was of polished teak planks. There was a kerosene stove, a pandanus sleeping mat in one corner, and a rough wooden table in another. The hut smelled of cooking, human sweat, and coconut oil. Durell hunted about for Weapons first. The best he could find was a machete about two feet long. The wooden handle was small for his grip, but its broad, weighted blade felt good. In the shadows of the hut, Willi moved about looking for clothes, her feminine instinct somehow appalled by her half-naked state, now that she was no longer near the sea.

  She found a blue smock that she slid over her head with a quick, graceful gesture. Its folds of bleached cotton came only to a few inches below her hips, and made her look even more desirable than before. But her morale was improved. She managed a tremulous smile.

  “Are they coming?”

  “They’re certain to search here. ‘Wait a minute.”

  He was reminded of long afternoons in the green light of the Louisiana bayous, hunting coon with Grandpa Jonathan’s dogs, occasionally rousing a tricky swamp fox. The wild chase often ended up with the quarry doubling back and hiding on their back trail, while long hours of exhausted effort went in stumbling through muddy swamp, stung and harassed by insects, in a useless chase for a trail that no longer existed. He tore a leaf from his memory and applied it to the present.

  A loft in the back of the mat hut was stuffed with straw and rice stalks, above coops of chickens and rabbits. A bamboo ladder led up to it, and Willi started climbing as a shout came, shockingly loud, halfway across the clearing. Durell gave the girl an unceremonious boost and fell, panting, into the straw of the loft beside her. He clamped a firm hand over her mouth, demanding silence, as men burst through the door below.

  Willie’s long body shivered beside him.

  From their vantage point, he watched the door burst inward and a man in a military uniform, carrying a Russian automatic rifle slung from a shoulder strap, stepped warily into the gloom within. He was Chinese. He wore a baseball cap with a long visor, rather like a Block Island fisherman’s cap, with a Chinese ideograph stenciled on it. Some half-dozen others crowded in after him. The jeep splashed across the paddy. The farmer that Durell had clobbered ran after them, shouting and weeping. The man in the cap turned angrily and impatiently slashed at the farmer’s head with his gun butt. The coolie pitched forward on his face, not badly hurt, but crying and weeping his complaints.

  “Oh, God!” Willi whispered. “It’s Fong!”

  “Do you know the farmer?”

  “I didn’t see him clearly before. He helps me find shells in the lagoon. He doesn’t work for Ch’ing, but now—”

  “Impatience in the enemy,” he said through stiff lips, “is a virtue for our side. That’s not a saying of Confucius. It's an old Durell axiom."

  She was silent. Her body felt hot and sweat-slippery beside him in the tickling straw of the loft. He put it out of his mind and tightened his grip on the machete. Below, a methodical, spiteful wrecking look place among the farmer Fong’s few possessions. The man with the gun blasted sleeping mat and chest, and the shattering uproar made the chickens squawk and t
he rabbits hop about in fear in their cages. Durell pulled back a little deeper in the straw. It was dark and hot and shadowed up here, close under the thatched roof and the pegged teak rafters, Something began to crawl along his leg, but he did not dare look to see what it might be. Tiny clawlets tickled and scratched at his thigh and began to explore his groin. His sweat turned cold. He did not move. Two of the armed men below were staring fixedly at the loft, talking in Cantonese. One of them lit a cigarette and called to the leader, who came and ordered them to ascend, gesturing to the bamboo ladder.

  But the cigarette smoker tossed away his lighted match and, astonishingly, a quick crackle of flame came from a pile of straw at the foot of the ladder. There were shouts of surprise, alarm, curses. The exploration of the loft was forgotten. The armed leader called a retreat, his grin cruel. Willi stirred beside Durell and again he clamped a warning hand over her mouth.

  For a long moment they lay absolutely still, while the flames leaped and took a firm hold on the hut. The Chinese patrol tumbled out, shouting and laughing.

  Willi’s lips moved and, shockingly, kissed his palm over her mouth. Smoke coiled between them. Her eyes were enormous, luminous, filled with an expectation of death.

  The fire exploded under them. Durell reached back with his free hand and killed the insect that was happily making itself at home between his legs. The girl’s eyes were red from the smoke. He rose to his knees as sparks filled the air. A few bits of straw nearby suddenly flamed. Durell beat them out, gaining a few seconds’ respite.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  He moved to the back of the loft. The mat walls were hot, ready to ignite like a bomb in a few seconds. He had to risk it that there were no armed men on this side of the farmer’s hut. He kicked at the wall, felt the woven pandanus yield and bounce back. He kicked again, and part of it gave way. Willi was coughing, with great racking sounds of suffocation. He tore at the wall and saw daylight.