China Sea

by David Poyer

  “Pig wall.”

  “What?”

  But Kalapadon was climbing over, damn near vaulting it, still holding Dan’s hand to steady himself. “Circles the island. We live inland.”

  They crossed a belt of coconut palms and emerged onto a path. Suddenly the air was cooler, damp-smelling, like a limestone cave. Dan wiped his forehead gratefully. The path was smooth. Not sand but worn white rock. It was not quite wide enough to be called a road. The palms arched over it in a tunnel of whispering shadows.

  “The village is that way,” Kalapadon said. “You see? Gives shelter from the typhoons.”

  The path curved and two young girls appeared, hand in hand. They stopped, staring astonished at Dan, then bowed to Kalapadon, greeting him respectfully. He spoke a few words, and they dropped their eyes suddenly, crossing their arms over small adolescent breasts. Then ran, giggling, bare heels and pale soles flying up like the bobbing flags of fleeing deer.

  The village was a scatter of open huts built on coconut logs and roofed with palm thatch or rusty sheet iron. Round-bellied iron pots squatted beneath them on blackened rocks. Fires smoked here and there. A black-and-white sow rooted at the high-tide mark. Four sucklings practiced around her, thrusting their snouts into the sand. A roofless outhouse perched over the water, colored strips of cloth fluttering in the steady wind.

  The store was tacked together of weathered plywood and galvanized iron. A woman eyed the stranger as she fetched orange drinks from a kerosene-fueled refrigerator. Dan was relieved to see several cartons of cigarettes, both American brands and Japanese, and some cans of tobacco and rolling papers on the shelves. That would ease the tensions aboard Gaddis considerably.

  They sat outside, on empty oil drums, as other gray-haired men joined them, squatting one by one on the sand. Naked children and closed-faced women watched from a safe distance.

  When some sort of invisible quorum had been reached, Kalapadan cleared his throat politely. He began, “You are the captain of the American destroyer?”

  “That’s right.”

  “We did not expect a visit from a U.S. Navy ship.”

  “I was passing by and decided to stop. Let the men stretch their legs.”

  “After the war, we saw many Americans. We were glad. Life was hard under the Japanese. An American LCI brought me back to the island from the prison camp. But it has been a long time since then. What brings you to us now?”

  “We’re on an anti-pirate patrol.”

  “Ah, pirates.” The old man spoke rapidly to the others; a murmur passed around the circle. He was silent for a few seconds, as if deliberating on saying more. Finally he added, “You’re hunting them, eh?”

  “For a while, anyway,” Dan said.

  “Good,” said Kalapadon. He looked out at the lagoon and sipped the soda slowly. “We’re fishermen here. One Filipino government boat came here years ago. A small landing boat, with soldiers. That was in the Marcos time. We have not seen them back since.”

  Dan leaned back against warm iron. Suddenly the can in his hand began to shake. He’d been under way so long, pressed with uncertainty and occasional terror. Now the palms cast dancing shadows on the powdery coral. Flies buzzed in the cool wind. For a moment fantasy gripped his mind. Give Juskoviac what he wanted. Let Gaddis go off over the horizon. Stay here; find a native girl; live in a hut for the rest of his life.

  Beside him Kalapadon sat relaxed, body draped over the drum. He was smiling, watching three naked children playing what looked very much like hopscotch.

  Dan cleared his throat. “My men would like very much to come ashore.”

  “I think they would be welcome.”

  “Do we need permission from the—” He’d been about to say “chief,” but that sounded so patronizing he groped for another word. “The local government. The mayor.”

  “We don’t have a mayor. If we have leaders, it would be the men you see around you here.”

  Dan lifted his soft drink to them, and they nodded back solemnly. “I’d like to bring my crew ashore, half of them at a time—that would be about fifty men. It would be best if we had something arranged for them to do. Say if we set up on a beach, swimming, volleyball, maybe roast a pig—”

  “That can be arranged.”

  They discussed prices. The old men turned out to be canny bargainers. At last they settled on a hundred dollars for the feast. Pork, rice, fruit, and fermented coconut juice. They allowed as how there might even be a band, or at least that was what Dan understood. They came to an agreement and shook hands. He made himself get up not too long afterward, or he might have stayed forever, and Kalapadon led him back to the boat.

  The crew was sitting under the trees, with a carpet of kids and young girls giggling and staring around them. The men looked pleased but disoriented, the way Dan felt. The ship was a distant gray nightmare beyond them. “OK, let’s head back,” he told them.

  “We going to pull liberty here, Captain? These are real friendly people.”

  “All arranged. Port and starboard liberty, and a beach party tonight.”

  They jumped to their feet, and he joined them, shouldering the inflatable from where it had been drawn up on the beach out until it floated free.

  * * *

  THE Gaddis men had been swimming and sunning themselves most of the afternoon, not going out far because the islanders warned them about the sharks. Now they gathered self-consciously as their hosts sang what seemed to be a hymn.

  They sat together cross-legged on woven mats on the sand. Bowls of rice and taro, fried pork and fish and baskets of hot-hearted doughnuts went from hand to hand. Dan and the elders sat separate, a few yards up the beach. He ate a little rice, then tried the deep-fried tuna. It was crisp and fresh and very salty. He cleared his mouth with a swig of coconut tea. Beyond the shore Gaddis’s lights rode steady and reassuring in the descending night. The air shivered to the rumble of surf. And not much later, a guitar began to sing, and girls’ voices embarked on a plaintive melody.

  They ate for hours, and as the night deepened brought out the tuba. Kalapadon explained it was coconut wine, the 10:00 A.M. vintage. Dan passed on it but accepted a hand-rolled cigar from a friendly old woman. He gave it a token puff and passed it on. The elder took it with a nod and settled down to smoke it between swigs of fermented coconut sap.

  “Now, about these pirates,” Kalapadon said in a low voice. “We know something about them. It may be you know it already, though.”

  Dan dropped his eyes from the singers. The bancas in the lagoon looked like they had putt-putted many miles. Fishermen exchanged news. It would be strange indeed if no one on this island knew anything about the incidents to the north. Whether they would say anything or not, of course, he had not been sure of. Now the elder leaned close and murmured beneath the singing, “You know they are Chinese.”

  “I’d heard that.”

  “There is a battleship with them. Our boats have seen it. We are too small to bother with. We have nothing valuable. They do not disturb us. We turn and run when we see it.”

  “A ‘battleship’?” Dan couldn’t help grinning.

  “A navy ship. A big ship.”

  “I’m looking for pirates. Not a warship.”

  “This ship works with the pirates. It makes the large ships stop, and then the pirates board them.”

  Dan stared at the old man. “Where does this happen?”

  “West of the Pratas, south of Hong Kong, east of Hainan Dao.”

  “A big piece of sea.”

  “Look for the battleship. Viatai here, his son saw it.” One of the gray heads nodded vigorously, reaching for a chunk of sizzling-hot pork. “He said it had large guns and many portholes. That is all we can tell you about it. Please, do not let anyone know you found out from us here. Manila is far away, and the Chinese are very close.”

  Dan thanked them gravely, not putting much stock in the rumor. Someone had glimpsed a Chinese destroyer, and it had become a “battleship
.” But the news might be worth forwarding up the chain. If they ever reestablished contact or found someone willing to acknowledge the wayward and orphaned Gaddis. Which he was beginning to doubt might ever happen. He kept thinking of the Flying Dutchman. Maybe these islanders would tell legends of the Flying American, the ship that steamed off into the wide, flat emptiness and never was seen again.

  A group of boys began singing, and the elders joined in, something in Tagalog whose tune sounded familiar but which he could not quite place. Not much later, Dan made his excuses and hoisted himself to his feet, figuring to find a convenient place to relieve his bladder.

  The night was fragrant ink. As he stumbled along, he came out suddenly on the path to the village. The worn earth was smooth and cool as fine flour under his bare feet. He smelled moist earth and strange flowers and the sweet breath of rotting coconut. Brush scraped and rustled as the path closed in. Then it widened again and a cloud cleared from a quarter-moon and he could see, a little.

  He was standing on the beach alone, looking up at the stars, filled with a slow sweet peace, when he suddenly heard a scream.

  It was coming from the village, not the beach. He started walking that way, bare feet slipping in the sand. Then another scream ripped out, and he lurched into a run, hands in front of him to avoid running into the trees that came out of the shadows, turning solid right in front of him.

  A woman was wailing by one of the huts. Islanders surrounded her, faces ashen. Flashlights flickered, but kerosene lanterns were more numerous.

  “What’s going on?” Dan asked.

  “You. Captain. He cut my daughter with knife.”

  “What are you talking about? Who?”

  “The sailor. My daughter twelve years old … he cut her with knife. She bleeding.”

  When Dan stepped into the mat-screened interior he caught his breath. Two old women stared up at him with blank ancient faces. One lifted a blood-soaked cloth for a moment. In the buttery light of a kerosene lamp he slowly made sense of what he saw.

  The girl had been a chubby-faced, dark-haired island Lolita. Now her right eye was gone, cut from the socket with a crisscross of razor slashes angled in from the circumference. The rest was blood and loathsomeness.

  “U.S. sailor,” the mother said, spitting the words at Dan. He felt the hostile looks of the islanders, the steady accretion of adult men at the edges of the group. Each carried an unsheathed machete.

  “Who was with her?” he asked the old women. No response. He asked the mother, “Does anyone know who it was?”

  “We don’t know name. Just a sailor.”

  Marsh Mellows, pushing his way into the hut. He was in khaki cutoffs. His bare chest shone in the kerosene glow. Dan caught the smell of coconut beer as Mellows stared down, then quickly looked away.

  “Get down to the beach, Chief,” Dan told him. “Take charge and get everybody into the boats. Check every man as he gets in. He’s got to have some blood on him. She might have fought back, scratched his face. Ask every man who he was with, what he saw, what he heard.”

  “Aye, sir.” The master-at-arms glanced at the girl once more and left. Dan stood, conscious now of the murmurs and jostling around him. He understood how they felt. This girl was his own daughter’s age. He’d brought the killer to them, unleashed whatever beast or horror Gaddis carried with her on this innocent island.

  Engelhart pushed his way in, dislodging another surf rumble among the islanders. The warrant officer looked at the women. “We found the knife,” he said.

  “Where? Whose was it?”

  “On the path. No telling whose it was, no markings.” Engelhart squatted by the girl. The women followed his every movement with flat, wide gazes. “We could take her out to the ship, get Neilsen to clean her up … oh. God. Her eye—”

  “See if you can argue her mother into it,” Dan told him. “I’m going down to the beach.”

  A bony figure in a wraparound joined Dan as he went through the trees down toward the sound of men’s voices. It was Kalapadon. Dan said, “Sergeant, I can’t tell you how sorry and angry I am about this. I knew we had a killer aboard. I had two suspects locked up, or I wouldn’t have let the men come ashore.”

  “It is very unfortunate.” The old man was close to tears. “That girl did not have a good name in the village. She would creep into men’s huts at night. But we did not look for this from you.”

  The liberty party was gathered near where the inflatable was drawn up. The engine was running, and the lights glowed bright. Dan came up to them, and when they saw it was him they parted, letting him through to where, in the center of the group, Chief Mellows stood inspecting a line of men one by one as they waited to step into the RHIB. He looked around as Dan came up to him, and his broad face was expressionless as coral stone. “Here’s the knife,” he said, thrusting it at Dan so suddenly he winced. It was a hunting blade, a heavy pointed thing that glowed silvery pale under the lanterns. “It was pushed into the sand. There was blood on the hilt.”

  He stared down at it, unwilling to touch it. The spittle had gone dry in his mouth. He had to think. Already he saw flames guttering in the woods back of the beach, heard shouts and threatening voices. The motor of the other inflatable droned in the darkess, and men splashed out toward it through the shallows. He heard the crackle of a voice on the PRC-10, urgent, peremptory. He dismissed all these things from his mind and said to Mellows, “Any luck, any ideas?” in a voice that sounded thick and slow.

  The chief master-at-arms held out a thick forearm, blocking the next man’s access to the boat. “OK, that’s a load. Cast off, then back here just as soon as you can,” he told the coxswain. To Dan he said, “No, just the knife. But I guess it wasn’t Shi-hime, like I thought.”

  “I guess not. Nor Pistol, either.”

  “This is one sick puppy. Carving on her eye like that—”

  “Just like Vorenkamp,” Dan said. “Just like the girls in Fayal and Singapore. I’m just glad someone interrupted him at it, this time. I wouldn’t blame these people if they killed us all, you know? If those torches start coming down here, I want all you men in those canoes learning to paddle. They were so glad to see us.… How can he keep doing this?”

  In a voice so low Dan could barely hear it over the yelling from the village, which was drawing nearer with each passing minute, Mellows murmured, “Oh, he’s having too much fun. He loves it. Why should he stop?”

  Torches flared and dipped, approaching from the direction of the huts. Dan saw it was the island men, maybe twenty of them, bare-chested, heavily muscled, carrying what looked like rolled palm-frond torches or else kerosene lanterns. And long machetes. The sailors turned to face them, drawing together into a denser mass.

  Engelhart, a few feet away in the flickering dark. “Captain? Where are you? Captain?”

  “I’m here, Chief Warrant.”

  “Sir, we got some pissed-off natives on our six. We got them outnumbered, but them choppers look sharp. Suggest we get the hell out of Dodge.”

  “I agree. Where’s the girl? I thought we were taking her out to the ship.”

  “The old women won’t let us take her, sir. And I don’t blame ’em.”

  Just at that moment, the islanders surrounded them in a semicircle, not shouting now, just edging their way forward with the machetes held downward. Some of the sailors snatched up driftwood and rocks.

  Dan slogged through the sand and held up his hand between the two groups. The islanders looked at him. “Listen to me,” he said. “I am the captain. If you want to kill anyone, kill me first. Where is Kalapadon? Where are the old men? I will speak to them. I am the captain, and I promise you justice.”

  * * *

  THEY didn’t want to let him go. Only after an hour’s angry discussion, punctuated by threats and shouting from the younger men, did Dan succeed in persuading the elders that he would report the crime, that he personally guaranteed that when the perpetrator was found justice would be done, and t
hat he would inform them of it, and of the sentence, when it happened. He also promised sizable cash indemnity to the girl and her family, payable as soon as he could arrange it with the Navy.

  Gaddis got under way at first light, bringing the hook up at the first faint silvering of the eastern sky. The withdrawing darkness revealed canoes ringing the ship. The islanders watched them leave without gesture, without motion. The pilothouse, too, was silent, except for the low-voiced updates as they passed through the eastern entrance, between reefs seething like scalded milk. As the atoll sank astern, Dan sat slumped, chin tucked into his chest. Contemplating his failure, his complacency, his fault and guilt.

  Around midmorning, after huddling for several hours in the signal shack, the signalmen broke a new flag at the port yardarm. Dan ordered it hauled down the moment he saw it. The signalmen protested that it was a joke. They lowered it sullenly.

  It was a black piece of cloth, hastily stitched with a white staring skull and crossed bones.

  IV

  THE FAR SIDE OF THE LINE

  19

  19° 14' N, 117° 32' E:

  THE SOUTH CHINA SEA

  THE dawn broke with him still in his leather CO’s chair, staring out at the sea as it created itself from darkness. For all he could tell from the rolling crests, the same polished gray-green as olive leaves, it could have been a billion years ago, before whole biological kingdoms had risen. Only instead it was today, this unavoidable day he had to meet and somehow master. Gaddis, dangerously low on fuel, without orders, manned by a sullen and restive crew, saber-sawed again and again into ten-foot seas driven out of the Luzon Strait by the interminable monsoon wind. The surface current here was carrying them north. He had moved with it, urged by a shadowy sense his business lay somewhere in that direction.