“Friendly ones?”
“Mostly. We did get chased out of one place by all the men in the area.”
They worked closer. When they were fifty yards from the closest fire, they stopped and Lam used his binoculars.
“Yeah, natives. But what tribe?”
He passed the glasses to Juan, who studied one fire, then another.
“Oh, boy, we could have some trouble. These are Tasadays, I’m almost sure. The most primitive of the tribes out here. They use stone knives, clay pots, and woven reed baskets. No metal is allowed. I have no idea what reaction they might have if we barged into their camp.”
“Can we go around them?”
“An extra four or five miles. See that cliff over there in the moonlight? It could be one that we can’t climb up. But there could be one trail up it if you know where to look. The Tasadays would. If they would help us.”
“We wait for daylight?”
“That’s a long time. But going in at night might really spook them.”
“Could you strip down to just your pants and shoes and go in and talk to them?”
“I’m not sure what language skills this tribe might have. Theirs is unlike any other. I could do some sign language, but even my presence there would be shocking to them.”
“Let’s give it to the decider,” Lam said. They worked their way back up the hill.
“So that’s the situation, Murdock,” Juan said. “Going around them is an option, but we’d have to scout that ridge across from them. Some of these ridges are almost unclimbable.”
“Do they have weapons?” Domingo asked.
“Yes, sir,” Lam said. “I saw spears with some kind of stone points that looked sharp. And bows and arrows. They could be a deadly force.”
Murdock considered it a moment. “Any more ideas?” he asked.
The rest of them shook their heads.
“Okay, Lam, Juan, and DeWitt. Do a recon around this right-hand end of their camp. Get over that small valley and check out the hills on the other side. If we can we’ll swing around them, go up the mountain, and still have a shot at getting to the rebel camp before daylight. Report in every five minutes by radio, and don’t in any way contact or be seen by the natives.”
“That’s a roger,” DeWitt said. The three stood and walked down the hill, angling to the right around the camp below. As they went, chanting began in the camp and Murdock shook his head. He had no idea what the natives were doing down there.
* * *
In the recon party, Juan stopped when he heard the chanting. He motioned the other two to come to him. “That chanting is part of a ritual of some kind. I’ve heard something similar in some of the other abo groups. All the more reason we shouldn’t go through them. They could be hopped up on something, maybe even drunk on some homemade wine. Lots of fruit out here, and wine can be a problem.”
They worked ahead.
“Let’s slant around the camp and check out the ridge,” Juan said. “We’ll come look over the camp closer on the way back. I want to see if I can figure out what the celebration is about.”
The three moved silently through the jungle’s lush growth. Once they kicked out a wild pig that went charging into the greenery with a few snorts.
“Glad that wasn’t an abo, or we’d be pincushions by now,” Juan said. “This bunch tends to be on the ferocious side when they get riled.”
Five minutes later they were past the camp and working toward the green mountain ahead of them. It looked much taller and steeper than it had from across the small valley. When they started up the first rise, they found a clearing where they could check out the top of the ridge.
“Oh, boy,” Lam said as he stared at the slopes above them through his night vision goggles. “We’re not climbing up there without some ropes and pitons.” He passed the goggles to DeWitt, who groaned.
DeWitt saw the face of the cliff, which looked like it was bare rock and soared almost straight up for over three hundred feet.
Juan took his turn with the glasses and looked to each side of the cliff. “Let’s try upstream,” he said. “We might have a better chance there.”
They moved a mile through the heavy growth near the small stream and checked the mountain all the way. The rocky out-thrust continued for half the distance, then narrowed, but was still a hundred feet of sharply sloping rock that they couldn’t get up.
“Downstream,” DeWitt said. He checked in on the radio with Murdock, reporting their bad news.
“Keep looking,” Murdock said. “We need to be a long way from this little valley by sunup.”
They worked as high on the slope as they could as they passed the abos’ camp. They were less than fifty yards away, and Juan motioned for a stop so he could check the camp out. He looked through the NVGs, then the field glasses, and waved to move ahead. When they were a hundred yards past the last of the small fires still burning, he stopped.
“Strange bunch back there. They were in the middle of some kind of ceremony or service. Not sure what it was. I did see a few skulls set on poles. Not a friendly sight. I counted about fifty of them, so I’m not sure it is the Tasaday tribe. I remember the last figures on them showed only about thirty. I still have no idea what the ceremony is. Could be some kind of fertility rite, or maybe a peace offering to the god of thunder. One of the Stone Age tribes I visited was scared shitless of thunder.”
They kept looking up at the cliff, and it seemed to be the same as before. The trio worked down almost a mile, and the rock wall remained stalwart and tall.
DeWitt checked in with Murdock and told him the findings.
“Keep going,” Murdock said. “The damn cliff can’t go on forever. We might have to make a four-or-five-mile detour. It will be better than getting roasted in a pot by our Stone Age friends out here.”
After another mile of plowing through the vines and undergrowth and going around fallen trees, they found a cleared place so they could see the top of the ridge.
“Yes, the rock is almost all gone and the trees and vines have taken over,” Juan said. He used the NVGs. “Yeah, we can get up the slope here all the way to the top of the ridge.”
Murdock sounded pleased on the radio.
“Good, stay put and we’ll meet you there. You’re on the right-hand side of the creek going downstream?”
“That’s a roger, Skipper.”
“Hang tight, we should be there in about twenty to thirty.”
The three sat on a log waiting. Juan looked upstream and shook his head. “Still wonder what tribe that is and what ceremony it was. I could do an addition to my paper on the abos.”
After a ten-minute wait, Lam lifted up and looked upstream. “Thought I heard something.”
“Could have been a night call from a bird,” Juan said. “We have a few thousand different species on the islands.”
“Yeah, probably.”
Twice more Lam lifted up and tried to hear something, but shook his head and settled down to wait.
The Motorola came on in their ears.
“Juan, we’ve got a situation here,” Murdock said. “You better come back up here. We’ve got abo men all around us, with their bows and arrows and spears, and they are screaming at us.”
The three took off running. Juan led the way through the vines, trees, plants, and orchids that grew wild everywhere.
It took them twenty minutes to cover the two miles. Juan had been talking to Murdock as he ran.
“Don’t for any reason fire a weapon. That would freak them out and you’d be a dartboard full of spears. Don’t shoot any of them. Kill one and the federal penalty is fifty years in the jailhouse.” Juan caught his breath, and then ran again. “Stay calm and don’t let them see that you’re upset. How many of you are surrounded?”
“All of us. We were going past a hundred yards out and they heard us, trapped us like wild game.”
“That’s how they make their living. Stay calm. We’re almost there.”
&nbs
p; Juan moved his party up cautiously the last fifty yards. The abos were so busy with their captives that they’d let down their guard. Juan watched the situation. The SEALs were standing, weapons at their sides, abos surrounding them all with bows and arrows or spears.
“Stay here, I’m going out,” said Juan. “Try to communicate with them.” He worked forward silently, then only ten yards from the nearest abo, let out a long wailing cry. The abos turned, surprised, nervous, holding up their weapons.
Juan gave the cry again, but different this time. It was shorter and more strident. The abos talked among themselves, their prisoners forgotten for the moment.
The third time he gave the cry, Juan stepped out into the clearing. He was bare to the waist, had no hat or weapons with him. When he ended the cry, he gave two signs with his hands, then bowed low and came up slowly.
Juan watched the abos. Some were still talking. From the back came one man, slightly taller than the rest of them. Most stood no more than five feet. This man wore a colorful headpiece made of bird feathers and crowned with orchids. He had a cape made of some native vines and fibers. In his left hand he carried a machete, probably a relic of some World War II Japanese Army camp.
The abo chief stopped just outside his ring of warriors, brandished the machete at Juan, who put his hands together in front of him and bowed again.
“I don’t know if this is working,” Juan said to his lip mike. “I’m using some old inter-tribe rituals I learned. I hope he knows them.”
The warriors wore only loincloths that looked to Juan like they were made from soft leather. A stiff belt held up the garment, and their bodies had been painted with bright red and yellows.
Juan took in all of this at a glance. Not a war party. He didn’t know what the celebration was.
“Your game,” Murdock said on the radio. “All our weapons are on lock/safety.”
Juan came up from his deep bow, glad his head was still firmly attached to his shoulders, and took two slow steps toward the chief. He stood there, arms folded, the machete gleaming in his left hand.
Juan used the sign for “friend” that he had learned from three different tribes. It was almost the same for each one. Now he used it again and again, changing it slightly, until the old chief’s face brightened. Then he frowned. He walked closer to Juan, pointed to Juan’s pants and boots, then at those of the closest SEAL, and shouted something.
Juan nodded and made another sign, then another. The old chief frowned, then looked frightened.
“Peace, we come in peace,” Juan said in English. Then he said the same thing in Filipino, and the chief’s head came up. He chattered two or three words, and Juan relaxed.
The old one knew the Filipino language. At least a little of it. Juan began to talk in that language, and a moment later the chief bellowed out what could only be a command. He bent and stabbed the machete into the dirt, and all the warriors laid their weapons on the ground and sat beside them.
“I’m feeling better already,” Murdock said into his mike.
“We’re not out of here yet,” Juan said. “There are customs and courtesies that must be observed. Remember, these are Stone Age people. The machete is not a weapon, it’s a symbol of command.”
Juan took two steps closer to the old chief, who made some motions, and both men sat down facing each other four feet apart. Their feet almost touched.
As they talked, Juan soon learned what words he could use that the old chief would understand. The chief said he had been captured when he was a boy and taken to a mission school where they’d taught him modern ways and to speak the Filipino language. When he was twelve, he stole the machete, wounded a guard, escaped, and traveled back to his people. He hated the modern ways, and had kept his tribe pure and free from them.
“We wish only to pass,” said Juan. “There are bad men near the coast we must deal with.”
The old chief’s eye lit up. “Two men go to coast to get coconuts. Last time one was killed by boom-boom. From ten coconut palms away he was killed.”
“Those are the men we hunt,” Juan said. “It is not your hunt, it is ours, and we should be going.”
“Must stay for ceremony. The rite of the virgins. Must stay. Come.” They stood.
“We just got sucked into watching a ceremony,” Juan said in his mike. “Bring everything. We’re no longer a big danger to them. But be cautious. Any little thing could bring an outburst of anger and violence.”
“You heard the man,” Murdock said to his mike. “We go see the pretty, then get back on the road.”
The warriors picked up their weapons and scurried to fires and small lean-tos, and then assembled near the large fire at the end of the village.
Juan figured the entire village was there, including children. Everyone sat cross-legged in rough rows in a semicircle around the fire. It had burned down now, but still gave off a lot of light and heat.
The SEALs were positioned in back of the warriors. They sat cross-legged in rows. The women and children were on the other side of an aisle. The chief had vanished; now he came out wearing a jacket that had been covered with orchids of every size and color. He still wore the headdress, and now carried a white cane.
A small stone platform had been crafted in front of the fire. The stones looked to Juan as if they had been chiseled into precise shapes and fitted together without mortar and wedged into place.
The chief stood on the platform and waved the white cane. The chanting began and continued in a higher or lower tone as the chief seemed to direct it with the cane.
Then he stepped aside and a drummer began to beat a slow rhythm. Three young women came to the small area in front of the platform and began dancing to the music. Most of the women in the tribe were bare to the waist, but these three wore blouses Juan figured were made of soft animal skins. As the beat picked up in tempo, the dancing became faster as well, and soon the three young women had flung off their blouses and were topless.
Now their dancing took on an erotic tone and it went faster and faster, and one after another the girls dropped their short skirts and danced naked in the soft moonlight mixed with the firelight.
Suddenly the drum stopped and the dancers froze in the positions they were in; then on a single drumbeat they turned and ran off into the darkness.
The ceremony was over. Juan sat near the chief, who did some explaining.
“We are alone here. In the old days we would raid neighboring tribes and steal women. Others did the same to us. It was a way of bringing fresh blood into our society. Without it we would wither and die. For ten years we have had no fresh blood. Now we will. The three virgins you saw dancing are ready tonight to become with child. The three will approach your men, each select one or two and mate with them. The mating should last all night.
“I can’t allow your men to leave until this life-giving act is done. I know you will understand.”
“Let me talk to my chief.”
Murdock laughed when he heard what the old chief had said.
“Impossible. We have to be on that ridge overlooking the hostage center before daylight.”
Juan shook his head. “It’s too far now for us to get there. Besides, if we refuse to mate with the three virgins, there would be huge trouble. It’s an honor the chief is giving us, and in his society, there is not the slightest chance that such an honor can be refused. If we try to walk away now, there could be considerable bloodshed. Those arrows and spears are deadly, and we would have no warning.”
Murdock scowled. He called Jaybird, Sadler, DeWitt, and Domingo together and Juan went over the situation.
“Hot damn, pussy tonight,” Jaybird yelped.
Domingo looked at Juan. “I have heard of strange customs for some of these Stone Age tribes. This one seems slightly more advanced than some of them. Commander, I don’t see how we can risk the chance of losing some men by refusing this honor.”
De Witt grumbled, and at last looked up. “Afraid I’m with the ove
rnighting here,” he said.
Sadler shrugged. “Makes not a lot of difference to me. But I’d as soon not kill any of these people, and that’s what it would come to. I’ll vote to stay.”
Murdock looked at Juan. “Tell the chief we accept this honor and we will stay. Can we ask for volunteers for this?”
“Afraid not, Commander. Each of you has been assigned a small fire to sit beside. The ladies will circulate, find the ones they like, and vanish into the jungle. In the morning, the chief will give us a guide to show us the quickest and easiest way to get to the far ridge overlooking the sea.”
“Done,” Murdock said.
The SEALs and the three Filipinos sat beside the fires, gently stoking them with wood to keep them burning. Murdock saw the girls, still naked, making the rounds of the fires. None of the girls came as far as he was, and he breathed a sigh of relief when Juan said on the Motorola that the exercise was concluded, the choices had been made, and the rest of the men were free to take their gear and find a sleeping area. They did not bunk down together, and no one was sure which men had been chosen.
In the morning all the SEALs were up at daylight and took time out to eat MREs. All men were present, and nobody was sure who had been selected the night before.
“I still say that Jaybird has an unusually big grin,” Ching said.
Jaybird just grinned wider.
Juan went to see the chief, and a few minutes later the chief came and bowed and presented Murdock with a carved walking stick five feet long. Murdock hesitated, then took the KA-BAR from his leg sheath and presented it handle-first to the chief. The old man stared at it and hesitated. Murdock took the knife and picked up a vine from the ground, and sliced it in half with a gentle stroke.
The chief’s eyes went wide. Murdock cut a branch off a shrub and whittled it down to a toothpick.
“Sharp,” Juan said in the chief’s language.
This time when Murdock offered the chief the handle of the knife, he took it and bowed deeply.
Two warriors stood by, waiting. Juan said the chief told him neither of them spoke any Filipino but they knew the best route to the sea. Juan and the chief both bowed again.
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