by David Poyer
“Fall back!” Oberg was yelling. “Fall back on the boat!” The SEAL set his AK to his shoulder and hosed a burst uphill. Dan was about to shout at him to stop when he noticed the rebels were all firing in the same direction, and moving forward, but that Oberg was falling back a step with each burst. The effect was to gradually separate the Americans and the Abu Sayyaf.
He fell back, too, pausing twice to trigger a burst in the direction of the hills. Something was wrong with his leg, but he didn’t look down. Another thunderstorm of mortar shells walked across the hamlet like a titan with a bad swing hooking up huge divots. Kaulukukui hulked out of the smoke and hanging dust, carrying a kicking Carpenter. He set the submariner on his feet, slapped a pistol in his hand, and shoved him toward the beach.
Dan fired till his magazine ran dry, spun, and sprinted down the trail. Gasoline-stinking fires crackled along it. Red stringy things hung from the burning palms. He vaulted a woman’s smoking body, her back laid open like a split hog at a barbecue, clothes aflame. Ahead he caught Henrickson’s diminutive figure, bowed in an all-out sprint. He sucked air, trying to keep his legs moving.
The jungle fell away. There were the vertical rocks, the gritty sand, and the boat. The rumble of engines. Wenck, standing to toss a line free, then spinning the wheel, bringing her stern to as Dan and the others hit the water and waded in, holding their rifles high. The smoke blew off the land low and dark. Dan hoped it would screen them. “Cast off!” he screamed, voice squeaky in a smoke-blistered throat. “Cast the fuck off, Donnie!”
A machine gun, a fifty by the sound of it, riveted slugs over their heads. Dan reached the stern, threw his rifle in, and pulled himself over the gunwale. He fell on top of someone else, wheezing, as the big Hondas snarled up to full throttle. When he recognized his own hand in front of his eyes it was black with soot and coated with blood and dirt.
14
The Kepuluan Tambelan (Tambelan
Islands), South China Sea
The islands were surprisingly high for such small specks of land, so far from anywhere. Dark green, sheathed with thick jungle and built on white foundations of surf. Parrots, at least he thought they were parrots, trailed long yellow tails, wheeling in noisy flocks. Surf seethed along the rocks at the base of the smallest, supposedly—according to the China Sea Pilot—uninhabited.
Dan lowered the binoculars and squeegeed his hand down his face. The heat rose in clouds around and under his clothes. It melted his face and ran down his cheeks. His eyeballs were liquefying. He worked his dry mouth and spat a slimy paste over the side, where it slowly uncoiled in the clear faintly rocking water.
He couldn’t enjoy the sun. Not as short of water, sunburned, and hungry as they were. He wondered if there were any wild pigs, anything edible, in that coarse green verdure. Didn’t really matter, they couldn’t take the risk, but he still wondered. He leaned back, rubbing what was now a respectable beard. But he was careful to keep his gaze averted from the other eyes staring at him.
He wondered if he was really safe turning his back on them.
It had been a long voyage down. Five days, all in all, though they hadn’t spent that entire time under way.
That first afternoon out, fleeing, he’d kept the boat close inshore, under cover of the smoke-pall from the burning huts and jungle; then, as it thinned, turned sharp and angled out to sea. He kept their speed down to minimize their wake. Five miles out he angled again, to join a half-mile circle of fishing craft drawing a net tight. He pulled up alongside one of the fishermen. The boat was weatherbeaten, handmade, strewn with nets, cooking pots, and clothes hanging on lines to dry; the family stared open-mouthed, like the children back in the village. Who were probably, he thought, being shot and burned even now . . . Kaulukukui and Oberg grabbed the net with boathooks and hauled a corner aboard.
They watched the jungle burn. And the fishermen watched them, but made no move either to welcome or shoo them off. Maybe their rifles had something to do with that. And their masquerade must have worked, because although the A-10s howled back and worked the rebel hamlet over again, with high explosive this time, they didn’t seem to notice the boat.
Around nine o’clock, as the sun started to get really intense, the fishermen pulled in their nets. He kept the one they had hold of, and again, no one objected. The little fleet cranked up their put-puts and nosed west in a loose gaggle, some leading, others trailing, drawing wide glittering vees across the calm sea. Dan started one Honda and ran with them, staying in the centroid of the group, neither one of the leaders nor the tail end charlie.
All that day they headed west, across the Strait and through a narrow unmarked channel of clear shallow green water, reddish-brown coral heads, and white sand bottom between what the chart called Sangboy and Teinga Islands, out into the Sulu Sea. He kept a close eye on the coral heads, but mainly just stayed in the wake of the fishermen. They cleared the channel as the sun started to dip, and turned north. Dan made a sweep of the horizon, clicking all the way around ten degrees at a time; then another, checking the sky. Clear. He pointed for Kaulukukui, at the helm, to keep the bow headed west.
“We keep poking along like this?”
“You can nudge her up to ten. That speedometer’s working, right?”
“Ten? That’s all?”
“Long way to go, Sumo. Let’s keep it slow till we see if we’ve got the fuel to make it.”
The other boats sank slowly beneath towering white clouds, leaving them alone on a sea like an old mirror. After half an hour Dan took his binoculars, which he’d managed to save, and checked the horizon again. Once he was sure there were no boats, no aircraft, and as far as he could tell, no drones tracking them, he took out his nav kit and the rest of the charts and went forward, behind the windshield, and began planning their route.
He’d expected to do this before they got underway, but now he perched on the gunwale and tried to do it on a folded chart with a pencil. He worked at it for an hour, checking and rechecking his intended course and fuel consumption figures. Then put it aside and stared down into the slowly passing sea, the purr of the four-stroke resonating across the flat water.
He figured the total distance to the intercept point at a little under a thousand nautical miles. Running at just below hull speed, they’d make about 230 nautical miles a day, which would make it 4.3 days in transit.
Unfortunately, when he compared that to the fuel/mile curves Oberg had worked up, it meant they’d run their tanks dry three days out. The Philippine Army attack had forced them to cast off with low fuel, hardly any food, and nowhere near enough water.
On the other hand, they were underway two days early. So there was no hurry, but there was a real danger of running out of everything, fuel first, leaving them rocking and baking in the South China Sea till they died of dehydration and sun poisoning.
He scratched in his beard again, combed it with his fingers. He went through the charts, then the Pilot, then his other references, looking for a favorable current or a bright idea, but came out empty-handed. He had no wind, no sails, and no oars, so that ruled out any assist.
“Crap,” he whispered. He sucked on the divider-points and thought.
Obie was on the wheel the next day when they saw the plane. Teddy caught the first glint far off over the rugged humpy lushness that was the coast of Borneo. Malaysia, over there. Or maybe Brunei—he wasn’t sure. He’d been here a couple of times before, but he wasn’t sure of the borders. And Lenson didn’t seem to want to let the charts out of his hands. Control. Control. Control. There it was.
He glanced back to where they’d rigged a tarp against the blazing sun. The commander was huddled under it in jeans and his dirty shirt, asleep. Or at least, with his eyes closed.
They’d run all night, navigating by sight and guess between Malaysia and Balabac Island and out into the warm open blackness of the South China Sea. Teddy had been surprised there’d been so little traffic. Only two sets of running lights all the way th
rough. As soon as Lenson had figured they were clear they’d come to port and headed down the coast. There were little islands ten or fifteen miles offshore and he wanted to stay inboard of them, stay as close inshore as they could. Teddy didn’t see the point. Who knew they were here? Who cared? Lenson kept complaining they didn’t have a fathometer. It would have been nice, but they had the spare GPS. They weren’t running a fucking destroyer here. Just a piece of shit pirate boat. They were lucky the engines even ran.
Thinking about that, he told Kaulukukui, “Hey, Sumo, that engine sound okay to you?”
“I don’t know. Sound good to you?”
“Hear that chatter? Sounds like a timing belt. We ought to pull the cover off, take a look.”
“I say long as it runs, leave it be.”
“Yeah, you’d say that. Fucking puddinghead Hawaiian.”
“Fucking rich boy hao’le.” Kaulukukui dipped his skivvy shirt over the side and wrapped it around his head.
“Hey, a real raghead. I pull on the end of that, does your head spin around?”
“Try it and see, asshole.”
Teddy didn’t come back. He kept his attention focused where he’d seen the glint. And pretty soon he saw it again. He looked aft to where the guys off watch were tumbled along the gunwales. The fat one, the submariner, Carpenter, was awake and looking at him. “Rit.”
“Yeah?”
“Shake Lenson up there.”
“He was up all night.”
“Get him up, Carpenter.”
Lenson rolled over, maybe he hadn’t been asleep after all, and crawled out from the shade. He rubbed his face. “What you got?”
“Air contact.”
He pointed, and they watched together for some minutes. “Heading our way,” Lenson said at last.
“Airplane,” Teddy yelled, and around the boat figures flinched and started to move. They crawled under the tarp or into the cuddy, with the anchor and line and the crates they’d stowed the weapons and ammo in to keep them out of the salt. Teddy snapped, “Sumo, grab somebody to help and get that fucking net deployed. We’re supposed to be fishermen here.”
They grabbed the net and started wrestling it toward the side. It was damp yellow twisted nylon, very heavy, and stank of rotted fish. They had the heavy rolled bundle up on the gunwale when Lenson turned from the plane. He saw what they were doing and recoiled. “Get that back inboard,” he barked.
“We’re fishermen, we need a—”
“I said, get it inboard! Cut that engine!”
They looked at Teddy. Who hesitated. Then pushed the throttle to idle and the shift to neutral. “You heard the commander. Get the fucking thing in.”
“Soon as they have it out of the water, put us back in gear. Same course.”
“Fuckhead,” Teddy muttered. But he obeyed.
The plane came in on them. A little high-wing prop job, single engine. It flew over them five hundred feet up and droned off to the north in a straight line. They watched till it was out of sight.
“Monty, take the wheel.” Lenson turned to Teddy. “Come on back here a minute.”
They stood beside the running engine. Teddy noticed again it sounded funny, a sort of chatter. Right now though he had to handle this guy. He crammed fists into pockets. “Beard looks good on you, Commander. Got a problem?”
“You got one, Petty Officer?”
“I’m here to make problems go away.”
“I don’t want any question about who’s in charge of this team, Oberg.”
“SEALs think for themselves, sir. I thought looking like a fisherman was a good idea. If we’re supposed to be a fisherman.”
“How many missions you been on that had two guys in charge, Oberg?”
Under that gray stare he didn’t feel as assured as he had before. He took his hands out of his pockets. “Not many.”
“If that plane was looking for us, a smooth sea like this, he had his eyeballs on us miles away. Long before we saw him. It’d be a dead giveaway to slow, alter course, and put out a net. Just the kink in our wake would show him that.”
After a moment Teddy said, “Okay. Copy that.”
“I’d prefer ‘aye aye, sir.’ And another thing, I want you to set up a lookout rotation. So if there’s another plane, or a surface contact, we see it before it sees us.”
Teddy watched a muscle jump under the commander’s eye. The guy was wound tight. Maybe not that far from losing it. “Aye aye, sir.”
Lenson turned away. Oberg contemplated the back of his head, then went back to the wheel. “I got it, Jeff.”
“We gonna have trouble with this guy?” Kaulukukui muttered.
“Just blackshoe bullshit. Setting up watches. Making sure I know who’s boss.” He spat over the side, looked at the compass, then back at their wake. “Jesus, man, can’t you even steer?”
They drank the last of the water the next day. Another blazer and no wind, or to be exact, what little there was blew from directly astern, making the exhaust travel with them for hours. Neither SEAL commented on it, but Wenck and Carpenter complained incessantly, and Henrickson vomited despite the calm seas. He seemed disoriented and lethargic, slumped under the shade of the tarp. Dan figured it was either sunstroke or dehydration, maybe both.
He’d hoped for rain, but there weren’t even any clouds. At last he said reluctantly, standing by the wheel, “Okay, we’re going to have to get fuel and water. We could use more food too. Come left to 180 and run in toward shore. Look for a village, piers, cell or microwave towers. Run in slow. I keep seeing reefs that aren’t on the chart. We bend a prop, we’re not going to be able to catch that freighter if she comes down the Strait at full speed.”
Wenck hummed to himself, dancing at the helm. He came slowly left and managed for once to steady up on the right course. Dan went forward and balanced on the bow, watching for coral heads. After a while Oberg handed up a pair of sunglasses. “Polarized,” he said. Sure enough, they helped.
He squatted. Took a GPS reading and matched the longitude against the chart. It showed marsh along the shore, with two small settlements and no roads leading inland. He didn’t feel great about going in, but if they had to, he wanted to keep their interaction as brief and anonymous as possible. “Could you ask Sumo to come up here?”
When Kaulukukui came up Dan said, not taking his eyes off the flat sea, “What languages you speak, Sumo? Any Arabic?”
“Arabic? I can tell a guy to drop his gun. Why?”
“Need you to do some shopping. You’re the least identifiable dude, by sight, as American, we’ve got aboard.”
“Copy that, sir. Water, food, and gas?”
“Since we didn’t get a full loadout, back in Mindanao.”
“What are we paying in?”
“Uh, dollars. But that doesn’t necessarily point to us as Americans, does it?”
“No, sir. Seen dollars used lots of weird places.”
“See Henrickson for the money. But don’t flash it, okay? Buy at different places . . . use your good judgment. Speak whatever language gets the message across, as long as it isn’t English.”
“Yessir. No problem. Want me to swim ashore?”
“No, no. We’ll run in to the beach. There’s got to be an inlet or pier or a landing. If there’s a village there.”
He had Henrickson get a list together as the land slowly rose. The mountains farther north had gradually dropped and receded toward the horizon, then vanished as they’d run westerly.
He remembered the last time he’d sent men ashore in tropical seas. Years before, when he and the orphaned Oliver C. Gaddis had been on the loose not far to the north. On their own, without a country or flag . . . now he was a pirate again.
A shudder traveled his spine. At least he didn’t have any serial killers aboard this time.
He didn’t like putting Sumo ashore alone. Especially when there turned out to be no sign of an inlet, just endless bright green salt marsh and mangrove. They motored along
it, making it clatter eerily with their wake, and finally made out a huddle of rusty roofs a few hundred yards beyond. He edged in as close as he could, probing for the bottom with one of the boarding poles, and at last dropped Kaulukukui overboard to wade ashore. Dan turned and ran out to deeper water and put the anchor down. Then they sat and baked, slapping stinging flies that came out to them and watching the beach through the binoculars.
The SEAL came back four hours later in a dugout canoe, paddled out of the mangrove by a dwarfish, skin-over-bones oldster who chanted without stopping in a high singsong. Dan kept everyone under cover except Henrickson, and told him to speak anything but English, but the Malay didn’t even look up. Kaulukukui handed up blue plastic jerries of water, red plastic containers of gasoline, and cloth-wrapped bundles of cooked fish, rice, plantains, and flat bread. When the Hawaiian heaved himself out of the dugout he folded bills into the outstretched hand. The old man dug in his paddle and angled away, still chanting as he merged again with the mangroves. Kaulukukui said he’d walked into town, found a store, pointed to what he wanted, then made signs for a boat to run it out. Everything had been very low-key.
Dan started a different engine, figuring to give each one some run time, make sure they could all be depended on, and headed ten miles out to sea, out of sight from shore, before resuming his original course.
They ran westward into the afternoon and then the evening and then the night again, the motor singing a steady burring drone. The only traffic was a few native lateens, miles off. It was perfect tropical weather, the sea nearly flat, the faintest swell lifting and dropping them; at sunset a few fluffy clouds hovered near the dying sun. He wished he could enjoy it.
Henrickson seemed better once he had some water in him. The analyst even managed to keep some of the rice down. But he still looked weak.
