Assignment - Sulu Sea

by Edward S. Aarons

  “Ask him where he’s going, Fong,” Durell asked.

  There was a chatter of Chinese. The civilian said something and pointed to the moored sub, then at the gloomy walls of the more distant Portuguese fort. Fong slapped him, and the man fell down and cried out something. and Fong threw him into the rough arms of two of his men. Fong’s eyes glistened. “This person is a technician, and he has been summoned by Prince Ch‘ing to verify the proper arming of a missile, an atomic missile, he says, taken from the American boat.”

  Malachy said: “That doesn’t make sense. It’s suicide.”

  Durell shifted the weight of his Sten gun. “Malachy, you take Fong’s men and get the Jackson’s crew free, as fast as you can. We’ve lost too much time already.”

  “Sam, didn’t you hear that technician? It means that Ch’ing figures he’s lost and is going to blow us all off the map.”

  “I’ve been worried about that for some time. Keep an eye on Willi, Malachy. I’ll take three or four of Fong’s men, and Fong himself, as a guide, and go in there alone.”

  “Why not all of us?"

  “Ch’ing knows we’re here. But if you divert his eye by attacking to free the sub’s crew in the compound, Fong and I and a few others might reach him. Go on, we’re wasting time ”

  Durell started away. The rain felt like a warm, wet blanket weighting his shoulders. Fong picked out four men and trotted after him with them. Durell heard a last set of footsteps running after him as he moved around the wrecked fishing boats toward the Portuguese fort. He turned and saw Willi.

  “Please, Sam. Take me with you.”

  “You belong with Malachy,” he said.

  She stood tall and straight, her sarong plastered by the rain to the long lines of her body. In the dim light that came across the lagoon from the dock and the freighter, he saw her eyes search his face; her white teeth bit down in frustration on her lip; and she pushed at her heavy, wet hair with impatience.

  “I don’t know where I belong, Sam. Not anymore. I don’t want anything to happen to you . . .”

  “There’s no time to discuss it. Stay with Malachy.”

  “Please, Sam—”

  He turned away, signed to Fong, and they began to run along the littered road toward the looming outlines of the old fort. Willi did not follow them. He looked over his shoulder once, against his better judgment, and saw her walking back to Malachy. A whistle blew somewhere, and Malachy’s Hakka rebels got to their feet and surged toward the stunned guards at the gates to the prison compound.

  There were scattered shots from the barbed-wire fence and a floodlight went on suddenly and filled the area of huts with a dazzling brightness. The Hakka guerillas were taking full advantage of the stunning effect of the storm and their own surprise raid. There were a few more stuttering shots, a series of screams and shouts, and the gate to the compound was broken inward and the Hakka men poured inside, led by Malachy. Durell, on the road, saw Malachy suddenly slip and fall, and he halted and waited for a moment, but Malachy did not get up and he could not see him again in the surge of men who poured into the compound around him. Out of the huts came the dazed, uncomprehending crew of the Jackson to greet the Hakka rescuers.

  Fong pulled at his arm. “Durell, please, we must hurry—”

  He still did not see the red-bearded Irishman rise. He did not see Willi, either. He felt a pang of despair, as if someone had hit him in the belly. There was a last flare-up of shooting at the other end of the compound. Fong spoke to him urgently again, and Durell wiped the rain from his face with the flat of his hand and nodded and went on.

  Together with the Hakka, he ran up the wet slope of mud and debris toward the dark walls of the old fort. No one got in their way. The rain came down in straight, hissing torrents, turning the earth to a slickness that made speed impossible. At Fong’s signal, they scrambled over a low wall of coral blocks and found themselves in the leafy debris of a shattered garden. Small specimen trees had been uprooted and bushes plucked from the soil and blown away. The only things left standing were two heavy stone lanterns, in each of which a small flame flickered. The lanterns were carved with dragons’ faces, and these alone seemed serene in a view of nature’s madness.

  He felt a fear in him he had not known before. He knew the full meaning of the words of the Chinese technician off the freighter. Peiping would have sent men who knew how to handle the A-3 missiles, young scientists who had been trained in Moscow before the split between the two empires. He could understand the desperate choice faced by Prince Ch’ing. Failure could not be tolerated. Out of defeat, some form of victory had to be snatched. He felt a twist of sweaty fear go through him again. Somewhere in this place there was a warhead taken from the Jackson. If Ch’ing had his way, the warhead would be armed and in seconds, there would be nothing left of this place, nothing left of the island but a vast, mushrooming cloud. . . .

  Fong and his four men worked their way silently through the wrecked garden with Durell. Under Fong’s wide coolie hat, the Hakka’s face was grim. His Sten was held on a taut shoulder strap. His wet face glistened in the faint glow of the stone lanterns, and he whispered an order to his men. The wind had died. There was only the sodden hiss of the rain and the distant, eerie boom of the island surf, breaking over reefs in smothering foam.

  Fong pointed ahead, spoke again to his four men, and spoke to Durell. “You see the—how you say it?—the moat? It is usually dry, but tonight it is filled with water. And this is good.” He touched one of the Hakka. “Hui Chi says we can cross without sound, because otherwise branches in the moat make much crackling noise to. warn guards on the wall. They already know something bad happens at the compound, they see the fighting and hear the guns. They will he very nervous, ready to shoot.”

  “Then how do we get in?”

  “Hui Chi knows a way.”

  A torch flickered overhead. The ripping sounds of Sten guns still came from the prison compound below. Durell held in his mind an image of Malachy, falling as he ran through the wire gate. He could not find Willi anywhere in his mental picture of the scene. He looked back through the rain at the lagoon. The Andrew Jackson, with the big 727 on her sleek sail, seemed unharmed. And now he could hear dim shouts of jubilation and saw the movement of men dancing with wild relief at their rescue from the compound. amid still he could not pick out the figures of Malachy or Willi.

  Now Ch’ing would know that his attempt to hijack the submarine had failed. The alternative would be considered, even at this moment. He felt it was hopeless. He could not get into the fort in time.

  The water flooding the moat was filled with broken tree limbs, a thick layer of torn foliage, and a dead man who had somehow slipped from the top of the wall above and broken his neck. Fong went into the moat first, wading with his snubby gun held high. The water only reached to the Hakka’s chest. There was little to be seen for a few moments as Fong, muttering softly to himself, felt his way along the moss-grown coral base of the wall. Durell checked his impatience. Three centuries of tropical weather had deposited a matting of vines that defied all attempts to cut and destroy it. Fong meant to make good use of it.

  Afterward, Durell thought he could not have gotten far without the Hakka. They climbed up side by side, clinging to the rough vines, and just as Durell reached the top, one of Ch’ing’s thugs appeared and yelled and slammed down at his head with a rifle butt. At that moment, Durell could only try to duck out of range. But Fong managed to free one hand to grab the sweeping thrust of the gun butt, and then the Hakka yanked hard and the enemy lost his balance. The man pitched headlong into the moat below, with a long, wailing scream.

  Fong grinned and scrambled over the top of the wall with Durell. “This way now, very quickly, please. I know where the fat monster is hiding.”

  They ran down a flight of old steps. ‘Durell wished fleetingly he could have glimpsed Malachy’s figure rising from the tumble of fighting in the prison compound behind them; and he wished, too, he co
uld have kept Willi free of the danger zone. He was filled with a raging anger that was like the storm sweeping the islands. When half a dozen armed men trotted across a courtyard, he was only just able to check his trigger finger on the Sten and throw up a hand to halt Fong’s men. They ducked into a stone archway, heavy with age, and Pong opened a door to lead the way into the central building.

  Stepping from the weight of the warm rain and threat of Wild new Winds into the luxurious rooms beyond was uncanny. It was like moving through a movie dissolve, an unreal curtain that divided violence and tumult with soft silks and gray curling incense and the rich opulence of very ancient treasures. Ch’ing had a taste for art that was reflected in the quiet jade pieces, the silken wall paintings, the carpets and Tang furniture, the priceless porcelains from the time of the Mings, the ancient scrolls in glass cases. Perfume cloyed the air from old bronze censers on heavy, black teak stands.

  Durell was driven forward by his urgency. With Fong and his men, they looked like ragged creatures lost in a palace of luxury, dripping rain from their clothes, their snubby Stens weaving this way and that like the heads of angry cobras. Fong gestured and they ran across the entry room and up a wide flight of carpeted stone steps toward the sound of anxious voices above. Within the solid walls built three centuries ago by Portuguese adventurers, the storm might as well not exist, Durell thought. No wind or rain could touch this place or disturb the Oriental peace of these rooms. Ch’ing must have reveled in his security here, in his mastery over the Hakka workers who labored in his sluice mines and loaded his ships. . . .

  A girl’s sudden shriek of pain echoed from all directions as Durell and Fong, with the other Hakka men behind them, came to the head of the stairs. Footsteps ran down a hidden corridor nearby. The place was as much of a labyrinth as the pleasure houses in Dendang.

  A thin voice spoke in Mandarin, a woman‘s voice, old and quavering, but filled with a dripping malice and anger that reminded Durell of the old harridan he had encountered in Fishtown. He touched Fong lightly on the shoulder, asked a question.

  Fong shook his head under his wet coolie hat. “I do not understand them. They speak of destroying everything—the island itself. The old woman-—Ch’ing’s mother—loves life too much. She argues against it and says the girl will speak. The girl knows something of you, and they question her. Her name is Paradise, I think.”

  It was not beyond Ch’ing, Durell thought, to use the A-3 warheads to blow Bangka off the map. His hunch had been right about the technician they had intercepted from the Peiping freighter. But there were others already here, apparently. Footsteps hammered away in response to a command from beyond the next doorway. The stairway where he crouched with Fong and his ragged men was dimly lighted. No one came their way. Yet a trick of acoustics made the voices beyond seem louder than normal, even though a heavy door, black with age, barred their way. He pressed his fingers lightly against the barrier. It did not move. There was an old iron handle, pitted with rust, and he tested the lock, and then Fong touched his shoulder carefully. The Hakka’s face glistened with sweat.

  “They question the girl, Paradise, about you. The old woman—the one Who claims royalty in her blood-—she knows how to hurt girls. I will kill them both.”

  “No, I want Ch’ing alive." Durell rubbed a hand over his mouth. “We'll need Ch‘ing later. He mustn’t be killed.”

  He knew that without Prince Ch’ing nothing could be proved in the eyes of the world. Americans had been killed and tortured, outright piracy had to be aired, and there had been interference with the Pandakan plebiscite. Without Ch’ing, the balance of propaganda could be twisted any way, even to charge American intrusion.

  Fong could not whisper translations of Ch’ing’s words. Apparently there were technicians in the next room who were able to discuss the complexities of arming an A-3 warhead. But one of the missiles, Fong whispered, was in a back courtyard.

  There was no time left, then. When the girl named Paradise screamed again, Durell turned the door handle and the heavy panel creaked inward. He ran forward with Fong.

  A pistol cracked, an automatic rifle ripped the fabric of the air. Fong sucked in air with a hiss of confusion. They had not burst into a room, as expected, but found themselves on a high stone gallery overlooking what had once served the old fort as a central council chamber. Below, on the flagstone floor, was a long teak table inlaid with fruitwood and ivory, with high, carved chairs neatly ranged around it. A huge photograph of Mao hung like a red and yellow banner over the president’s chair. There was a massive cabinet behind this that dated back to the old Portuguese merchant-adventurers. On a dais before the cabinet was a thronelike affair, with the massive, enormous figure of Prince Ch’ing seated before a small, angry, and anxious group of Chinese in civilian clothes. They were not Oceanic Chinese, to judge by their Peiping-style suits.

  On the floor at Ch’ing’s feet was the girl, Paradise, stripped to her skin, her back a series of clawed welts. The old woman, grotesque in a gorgeous blue and gold brocaded gown of heavy silk, stood over the tormented girl like a vicious crone.

  And there were a dozen or more armed men alerted and ranged against the walls of the big room. One of these, more ready to react than the others, had been staring directly up at the gallery where Durell and Fong and the other Hakka erupted. The man’s trigger finger tightened in spasmodic reflex.

  The racket and clamor of the shots and ricocheting slugs stunned the senses. There was a thin shriek from the old woman, and a hoarse order from Ch’ing as his vast weight lurched upward in surprise. Fong grunted and staggered and caught the iron rail of the gallery and squeezed off a long, raking burst with his Sten. The other Hakka men triggered their guns with him, spraying the scene below. Men shouted, fell, turned awkwardly, faces upward. Durell called to Fong to follow and swung along the balcony at a running crouch and started down a flight of narrow stone steps built into the wall. There was no railing. There were crashings and shrieks and splintering sounds and another burst of fire in reply from below. The old woman fell away from the naked body of the girl as if kicked. She skittered awkwardly, her silk gown jumping and jerking as if self-animated, a horrible puppet dragged and punched across the floor. She was dead long before the bullets finished hitting her.

  “Fong, this way!” Durell shouted.

  But there was only a falling body, a toppling bundle of arms and legs, spilling blood and brains from under a head shattered by a dozen slugs. The wide-brimmed straw hat of the coolie fluttered like a broken bird to the floor below. Fong's body made an ugly sound as it struck the stone. At the same moment, Ch’ing turned with a sign to two of the Peiping men and vanished through a doorway beside the mahogany cabinet. Durell hit the bottom of the stairway and jumped for the dais. Something tapped his shoulder and spun him off balance. There was more shooting from the gallery, a deadly fire fight that was suicidal between Ch’ing’s men and the survivors of Fong’s little platoon. Durell slammed through the doorway after Ch‘ing. Only two of Fong’s men survived to follow him.

  It was still raining. The dark downpour was heavy and endless, filling the night with its hissings and chucklings. Floodlights turned the rain into vertical silver curtains. A gate in the courtyard wall yawned blackly, but closer to hand was a long, stake-body truck, a dual-trailer affair originally designed to haul supplies for the tin sluice mines and Bangka’s docks. Its load tonight was quite different.

  The A-3 Polaris looked monstrously sleek and deadly, secured under canvas to the fiat truck body. Several side plates had been removed, and two civilian Chinese were busy delving into the missile’s interior. Their faces looked unnaturally tight, their eyes agleam with a suppressed hysteria that implied a knowledge of impending suicide. Ch’ng stood with them, heedless of the rain, speaking with rapid urgency in his round face.

  As he recognized the meaning of what he saw, Durell wondered how many times recently the world had balanced on such a fine edge of madness. If the wrong word wer
e spoken, if the wrong man were in the wrong place, humanity faced a holocaust. And there it was—the missile, the imperialist enemy, the new dynasty of emperors in Peiping. Missile and madman were together, willing to fire the earth’s atmosphere with terrible death. Durell could not wish the missile out of existence; it was a fact, woven into the fabric of his life for too long, and his dedication to divert its awful power over the minds of evil men had taken him out of the normal way of life long ago.

  He felt heavy-minded, reluctant to do anything. What happened was inevitable. He felt a hypnotic fascination with this headlong rush toward self-destruction, overcome by a desire to stop and let these men do what they were doing until it was ended, until the circuits clicked shut, the warhead was armed, and the inevitable surge of current triggered the explosion. He told himself to move. But he could not move. He began to sweat, standing there in the dark silvery rain; the weight of the Sten gun on its shoulder strap pulled at his bleeding wound. He had forgotten the injury taken in the room above. It did not hurt. The enormity of that sleek monster on the truck filled his mind, and he saw that the men were working desperately on it, changing its inert darkness into incredible force. They were ready and willing to die and be transmitted into flaming, whirling atoms, to dance in the mushroom cloud, entwined with it like lovers at the height of their desire. . . .

  But he could not be like them. He groaned and he knew he had never felt like this before, and he was afraid of himself.