Blood Tide

by Robert F. Jones

  Blood was blurring his eyes, washing down with the wind from a nick in his brow, and he wiped them clear, trying to see who was in the other Thunder. His eyes flickered clear. He saw the pilot—a white-haired Moro in a sun-bleached blue turban, his beard blowing back in the wind as he grinned at Ibrahim. There was another figure in the Thunder, behind the machine gun, long dark hair blowing wild, wide green eyes over the gun barrel, through the sights, close now, not twenty yards, fifteen, ten . . . it was a woman at the gun! A young woman with a face like a hawk . . .

  The Lewis gun opened up at point-blank range. Its bullets smashed the Thunder’s pilot into bloody rags, then leapt to the gunner and riddled him. The last burst hit the engine, and the Thunder blew up . . .

  “Muy bueno!” Kasim shouted over the wind. “Allah akhbar!”

  High above town the cathedral bell sounded the last stroke of noon.

  Shortly before noon Balabatchi’s jeep returned with the five guards he had summoned. Balabatchi awaited them in his sail loft. They looked puzzled as they entered the room, more puzzled when two wide-faced, pale-skinned, pockmarked men with crew cuts and the odd, flat black eyes of Hapon shut and bolted the door behind them.

  “We are overthrowing the commodore,” Balabatchi told them simply. “He is an enemy of our religion, our islands, and thus our people. Are you with us?”

  “Who are these men?” a guard named Mufaddhi asked. He looked at the Japanese.

  “Allies,” Balabatchi said. “What is your answer?”

  The guards remained stupefied.

  “Make up your minds,” Balabatchi said. “We must begin now. Friends or enemies, you?”

  Three of the five, the youngest, quickly said, “Friends!”

  Mufaddhi and another man, Haji Hassam, one of the most respected of the guards, were still silent.

  Balabatchi nodded to the Hapon. They took Mufaddhi by the arms and frog-marched him to the big, black-and-silver machine that stood on a bench near Balabatchi. Haji Hassam began to edge backward, toward the door. Another Hapon was there. He had a machine pistol in his hands. The haji recognized it—an Uzi. Made in Israel, the enemy of all men.

  One of the Hapon grabbed Mufaddhi’s right hand by the wrist and forced it into the mouth of the sail-sewing machine. His partner stood by with a finger on the power switch.

  “Friend or enemy?” Balabatchi asked again.

  “Friend,” Mufaddhi said, his voice cracking.

  “You are lying,” Balabatchi said. He nodded abruptly toward the man at the switch.

  The machine thudded swiftly, loud yet muffled, like a distant machine-gun. Mufaddhi stifled a scream. The heavy-gauge needle slammed through his hand a hundred times, tearing it to pulp.

  The haji had stepped forward again, involuntarily.

  “Too late,” Balabatchi said. He made a quick gesture across his throat to the Hapon, then led the three younger guards to the door. Looking back, they saw Mufaddhi and the haji slumping to the floor, their throats slashed from ear to ear by the Hapons’ knives. One of the Hapon jumped back to avoid the splash of blood. He cursed in a voice harsh as the sewing machine.

  “Now we release the prisoners,” Balabatchi told them as they climbed into his jeep. “The boats should be here at any minute.”

  They bounced out over the rutted track toward the salt flats through the shimmer of noonday mirages—afrits and djinns danced to the whine of the engine.

  “So tell me,” the commodore said, “just what were those thumps, then?”

  “What I told you before, sir,” Billy Torres replied. “Probably just some locals dynamiting fish.”

  “Probably? I told you to check.”

  “I know it was just dynamite,” Torres said. “Why send a Thunder down there when we already have four of them at the basin?”

  “Because they might have been attacking the basin!”

  “Not enough explosions for any kind of serious attack,” Torres said.

  They were standing on the beach at the end of the Balbal channel. The commo had his binoculars to his eyes, trying to see around the southern bulge of the island all the way to the Lázaro boat basin. It couldn’t be done. He jerked the glasses upward. Black clouds rose and thinned over San Lázaro.

  “That’s smoke,” he said sharply. “Just about where those thumps were. Just where the basin is.” He lowered the glasses and turned to Billy. “What did they say on the radio?”

  “Their radio isn’t working,” Billy said. But he was worried now. That was smoke to the south. “I’ll send a boat out.”

  He signaled the first of the eight Thunders moored behind a revetment in the channel, caught the pilot’s eye, and pointed toward San Lázaro. The pilot nodded; he’d already been briefed.

  The Thunder eased out into the channel, then speeded up a bit. But after only a hundred yards or so it backed down suddenly, its engine throwing blue smoke.

  “Minas!” the man at the wheel yelled, pointing seaward. “Boat mines! Many of them there!”

  “Oh, fuck!” the commo said. He started to throw his binoculars down, then thought better of it. “Goddamn it, Billy—”

  Just then the sound of heavy firing broke out from the jungle behind them.

  A high adobe wall topped with razor wire and spikes encircled the base from the rear and down both sides to the beach. Loopholes pierced it every few yards—firing slits for riflemen. Curt was walking in the shade, whistling for Brillo. He’d ordered the dog to sit and stay while he talked with the commo, but he was gone now. Ahead Curt saw Tausuq guards suddenly crouch and duck away from the grilled rear gate. One of them fell over on his back, kicking. Something stuck up from this throat. Another guard raised his M16, then snapped backward like the first. An arrow? Sticks clattered against the far side of the gate, and one wobbled toward Curt, bounced sideways off his shoulder to the dust. He picked it up. Bamboo fletched with jungle-cock feathers, a long, hand-forged iron head spiked as with the barbs of a stingray’s whip and covered with sticky black tar—poison.

  Gunfire exploded all around, from both sides of the gate. Guards crumpled and crawled. A bright flash—the gate toppled on one hinge and lay askew. Little black children came pouring through the gap, naked kids, carrying spears and long-barreled rifles. Kids with beards? Pygmies! A pygmy saw Curt and cocked his arm. Something dark and long and heavy flew past his ear. Other pygmies raced toward him with bolos in their hands.

  Brillo slammed past Curt, dodging as he leapt, growling deep in his throat. A pygmy went down beneath the dog, and then Brillo was up. The pygmy kicked once. He had no throat left. Bolos whirled. The dog was everywhere, a red-brown blur, slashing white teeth. Pygmies screamed.

  “Brillo!”

  Curt was running back past the gunboat shed, the dog loping beside him looking back, snarling. His muzzle was red. Tausuqs streamed past Curt, running toward the gate, firing from the hip as they ran. Brass spun through the noon dazzle. Curt turned a corner of the shed and collided with the commodore. They both lay sprawled on the ground.

  “What . . .” The commo swung a .45 wildly in one hand as he scrambled to his feet.

  “They’ve carried the gate,” Curt shouted over the clattering gunfire. “Pygmies! Hundreds of them!”

  The commo looked ahead—to the flash and crump of grenades behind the boat shed. Smoke. More mundos were running past them, slowing as they recognized the commodore. Torres ran up with an M60 machine gun in his hands, its belt draped over one shoulder. He was breathing hard, his eyes were ablaze.

  “There’s boats all over the place out there,” he shouted, pointing seaward. “Some kind of a big old island schooner with no masts chugging up behind them, covered with goddamn Moros. Should we hit them? Sortie the Thunders?”

  “There’s Negritos coming through the rear gate,” the commo said. He sounded calm, white under his tan, but composed. “Get back there and organize the perimeter. Get more of those M60s back there. Cross-fire on the gate.” He looked around. “Her
e! You men!” A dozen mundos racing toward the rear gate skidded to a halt. They all carried M16s and bolos. “Come with me.” He turned back to Torres. “I’m going out the side gate, if it hasn’t been taken yet, and try to flank these Negritos. Hughes, get a weapon and come with me. We’ve got to take the pressure off our flank before we can tackle those boats out front.”

  One of the Tausuqs ran up to a pile of bodies at the corner of the gunboat shed and came back with an M16. He slammed it into Curt’s hands. He smiled grimly—it was Abdul. Then he slung a bandolier of magazines over Curt’s shoulders. The commo was already running. . . .

  * * *

  Sergeant Grande watched his troops fall back as planned, still throwing poison arrows and stick grenades through the gate. The satchel charges had blown it open as he’d hoped they would, and now the enemy was looking to its rear. Grande had two Lewis guns sited to keep the gate under fire as long as necessary. Negritos waited beside him for orders. Some carried heavy, conical bundles—shaped charges of the sort the sergeant had used in the war to shatter the walls of Japanese bunkers. He sent the four men with the charges to their assigned positions. The others—a dozen of them—he ordered on another mission, back into the jungle to round up his secret weapon. They smiled happily and trotted off, silent as stalking hunters. Some, he noticed, had severed Tausuq heads swinging from thongs across their shoulders. Sergeant Grande checked his wrist-watch: 1235 hours. Right on schedule . . .

  Kasim slowed the Blue Thunder and idled by the edge of the reef, just off the boat basin. Miranda had changed the drum on her Lewis gun and was leaning back against the cockpit’s after coaming. The sound of gunfire from the boat basin had at first frightened the gulls and shorebirds into loud, wheeling flight. But now she saw that the gulls at least had returned. They circled and screamed near the mouth of the channel. She watched one land in the water, peck cautiously at first, then with rapid gluttony, at something floating on the waves. Her stomach heaved.

  Kasim handed her a cup of cold, tart fruit juice. She took only a swallow and set it aside.

  Well, she’d made her own decision. Now she’d have to live with it. She thought of radioing Venganza on the small Japanese-built handset Sôbô had given them, but the thought of having to talk that stupid military jargon was too much for her. Anyway, they were busy down there. She could hear dull, thudding explosions and the occasional rattle of machine-gun fire on the weakening northwest wind. To the west she noticed big anvil clouds shaping up on the horizon. Mares’ tails preceded them like silver-gray banners. Battle flags torn by some war in the sky. Weather on the way.

  More gulls were on the water now, tearing at long, limp hunks of red and khaki-colored meat, screaming and slashing at one another with their beaks whenever intruders came too near. Her stomach heaved again, and she had to put her head between her legs. What had Culdee said? Too much adrenaline on an empty stomach? That’s not the half of it, she thought.

  “Okay Kasim,” she said when she’d gained control of herself, “we might as well get on out to Seamark.”

  He looked at her with concern in his eyes, then nodded and pushed the throttles forward.

  Crouching, the commodore led them up a gully overhung with spiny lianas. Two Tausuqs were out front on point. Curt could hear the stutter of machine guns ahead to his right, and the quicker chatter of other weapons from where the wall ran across the rear of the base. They were moving toward the slower guns. Moss-covered rocks filled the gully’s bottom, and twice he turned his ankle. Brillo padded beside him, his coat stiff with blood. It looked as though the dog had been nicked across the left shoulder. Christ, not one of those poison arrows I hope, Curt thought. But Brillo showed no signs of poisoning. His eyes burned hot yellow through the green gloom.

  Millikan raised his right arm behind him, palm toward them—stop. Then he signaled Curt to come up beside him.

  “Okay, we’re right on their flank now,” he whispered. “The guns can’t be fifty yards from us. I think there’s a clearing ahead—see how the light brightens out there? Maybe another ten yards. I want you to take half the men and spread out along the lip of the gully. I’m going to take the rest and cup them in to your left. Give me five minutes, and then move out when you hear my first shots. Get in on them, keep low, and lay it on ’em. We’ll push these bastards to the wall. Let’s synchronize our watches.”

  “I don’t wear a watch,” Curt said. “No use for ’em.”

  “Christ,” the commo moaned. He banged his head lightly against the barrel of his Armalite. “Hippies. Okay, just wait for my shots and then open up. If they start pushing you back, make your stand here in the gully. It’s good cover, and you can stop them.” He sniffed and wrinkled his nose. Brillo was breathing in his face. “What a breath on him,” the commo said, pulling back. Then his eyes lit up. “Say, can he retrieve?”

  “Damned fine retriever, sir,” Curt said. “Everyone says so.”

  “Well, we’ll take him with us next time we go out to pop some birds. I saw three coveys running ahead of us back there a ways. Ought to be a good season.”

  He got back into his crouch and moved out, up the gully, with his six men.

  Curt called Abdul over to him and explained what the commo had said. Abdul nodded and began dispersing the men. Curt looked at the M16. All the Filipinos called it an Armalite. How did you work the son of a bitch? He’d had one down in Colombia, in the boat, but he’d never fired it. He began fiddling with levers. He was still fiddling when he heard a burst of shots from the jungle to his left.

  Abdul and the others were up and moving, crouched low, weapons pointing ahead. Brillo whined eagerly and glared at Curt. No, he thought in a flash of panic. I’ll just stay here in the gully, back them up. . . . Then he thought, What if those pygmies are circling us? If they’ve gotten behind us, like we did to them? Visions of swinging bolos. He got up and followed the others.

  The jungle ended abruptly a short way ahead. The light in the clearing was blinding after the gloom. Bullets slashed through the greenery, twigs flew and fell, whole branches sagged, twisted by the fire. Curt saw muzzle flashes at the far end of the clearing, more flashes from the jungle to his left. A grenade whirled their way and exploded, throwing dirt and moss over them. Two Tausuqs were down, groaning. He saw Negritos running toward them, dodging, crouched nearly to the ground. Arrows whizzed up from their bows, traveling among the winking muzzles, and whipped close to Curt’s head. He tried to raise the Armalite, but its front sight was caught in a vine. The vine stuck him with thorns when he tried to clear it.

  He saw the commo, kneeling beside a tree stump, rifle to his shoulder, blasting away, reloading, blasting again. Negritos screamed and charged, then fell to the commo’s volley. More grenades, from both sides. Gouts of black and green with fire at their heart.

  The commo was up and running forward, his men with him, four of them, anyway, firing as they ran, kneeling to reload, then running forward again. Then Curt heard a weird drumming sound. The ground under his belly started to shake. An earthquake? No. Those Phantom jets again? He looked up at the cloud-ripped sky.

  Out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of something black and wide and spewing dust. Turning to look, he saw them coming—Christ! Stampede!

  The jungle at the far side of the clearing erupted into a herd of charging cattle, small black wiry animals with steeply veed horns. They pounded into the clearing at full speed, bellowing and screaming and tossing their heads. Pygmies came behind them, firing long, broom-shaped rifles into the air, whooping like tiny buckaroos. Curt saw a thick-necked little bull catch a Tausuq on its horns. The horns punched through the man’s chest and stuck out his back, red and jerking. Other Tausuqs were knocked down and disappeared under the slashing hoofs. The commo stood his ground, firing single shots into the arrow-shaped phalanx of the stampede, well-aimed shots, dropping an animal with each one. Then his Armalite must have gone empty. Curt saw him fumble for another magazine. The herd was coming
fast, it was on him, he disappeared in the dust cloud that swelled from the racing hoofs.

  Abdul and the others were gone.

  Curt turned and ran.

  Behind him the charging tamarau herd swung left under Negrito control and headed straight for the gap in the tall, pockmarked adobe wall. Sergeant Grande let them pass, then ran, with his men in their wake, through the gates of the fort.

  Curt found a pump boat beached on the shore, far south of the fighting. He saw other boats pulled up and hidden in the jungle’s edge. The tracks of many barefoot men led away from them, toward the base. This boat would do. He ordered Brillo aboard—the damned dog wanted to go back and fight some more, at least take on one of those goddamn cows. They must have been those buffalo the commo talked about, Curt thought. Tamaracks? No, those were some kind of trees.

  The outboard started at the first pull. The housing was still warm. Curt swung the boat seaward and ran back toward San Lázaro. No more commo, he thought. Billy would be happy. The commo wasn’t such a bad guy. He sure was brave enough. But no more commo—not if one of those tamaracks skewered him the way they skewered those others. Tausuq shish kebab. He shuddered.

  He headed back toward the Sea Witch. She was fully provisioned, he knew, her tanks topped off with diesel and water. This isn’t my fight, he thought. I’m damned well out of it. Pygmies. Buffalo. Screw it. With the wind dying from the northeast, I ought to be able to work well offshore by nightfall. Don’t like that weather to the west, though. Hawk winds? Devil’s drool? Well, it was better than what lay behind him, anyway.

  He approached the Sea Witch from her starboard side. She was tugging at her anchor chain on a weak outgoing tide. Good, even a weak tide would help him. He tied off the pump boat and swung aboard. Brillo jumped up after him, stopped for a moment, then gave a yelp and sprang for the companionway. His tail was wagging madly. What?

  Curt heard a thump alongside, saw a bowline hitched on the portside rail. He looked over. A Thunder was tied there, empty, bobbing. Where was the M16? He’d left it back at the gully. He heard footsteps on the companionway ladder and turned around.