It was Miranda Culdee.
TWENTY-NINE
No wind now. The air was hot and heavy. All around them the sea rolled slow and clear, thick as molten glass.
Culdee and Sôbô sat in the lee of the deck gun, their backs to the action. Sôbô thought it best that they not disclose themselves just yet. Bullets buzzed overhead now and then, but the fire from Balbal had shifted from the schooner to the pump boats closer inshore. Culdee had watched the pump boats for a while, crouched behind the tarp-shrouded gun. They raced at speed toward the beach, bow on, then cut hard over and ran parallel to the reef, guns blazing. Like Indians attacking a wagon train, he thought. A bullet spanged on the deck gun’s barrel, then rattled around inside the tarp at random, ticking and clanking until it hit the deck. The schooner’s Moros crouched behind bales that lined the gunwales, firing back and whooping as the mood struck them.
Culdee turned and sat down beside Sôbô.
“Nothing much happening,” he said.
“It will, old son,” Sôbô said. “And soon.” He checked his watch. “At 1330 precisely—only five minutes more.” He hummed something tunelike under his breath. “Only five minutes more. Remember the song? Back during the war? Tokyo Rose played it all the time. Good old Rose. I hear she’s alive and well in the United States now.”
“Beats me,” Culdee said. He was watching Suleiman the Eagle, up on the foremast. El Aguila was spotting for the guns on deck. He sat in a tatty-looking crow’s nest atop the mast. It was built of old barrel staves on the outside, but inside was a curved shield of boilerplate that rang like a steel drum when bullets hit it. There were boilerplate shields inside the schooner’s hull as well, clear down to the waterline. Heavy enough to stop machine-gun bullets all right, but how about three-inch shells? They’d soon see.
A tendril of smoke wafted across the deck from the bales. Culdee sniffed at it. A tracer must have set a bale on fire.
“What the hell is that stuff? The bales, I mean.”
“Marijuana, I’m afraid,” Sôbô said. “One of the kumpits from Basilan had a load aboard, and I commandeered it. Adds to the allure, what?”
“Weird-smelling stuff.”
“Don’t inhale too much of it, old man. It’s called Zambo Zowie, and I’m told it’s quite potent.” He sang quietly to himself—“Only two minutes more, only two minutes more.” He laughed. “I loved that old Yankee dance music back then. Great tunes. Hate this music they play nowadays. Beastly stuff. Too loud for these old ears. Rock ’n’ bloody roll.” He sounded a creditable Bronx cheer.
“Miranda loves it,” Culdee said. He wondered how she was faring.
Seamark, once Sea Witch, pounded north into the chop, running on her engine. Kasim followed in the Blue Thunder. Miranda, with a stubby AK cocked on one hip, kept a close eye on Curt where he stood at the helm. Brillo sat at her side, leaning against her legs. Now and then she scratched the dog’s ears and he mumbled. But her eyes didn’t soften.
“This is stupid,” she said harshly. “I really ought to, you know.”
“Ought to what?” Curt asked. His knees were shaking. He was scared. He was more than scared. He was downright fearful for his life. He’d never seen her look like this before.
“Just blast you where you stand, you son of a bitch. If it weren’t for you, none of this would have happened.”
He couldn’t believe it. She’d followed him clear across the Pacific, tracked him down. Vengeance. He hadn’t thought she’d had it in her. “Hey, wait a minute!” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “I’m on your side. Maybe you don’t know it, but I am.” His mind was working wildly, looking for a story. “Why do you think I’m here? Why do you think I was working for Millikan? It’s not sheer coincidence. . . .” He’d been about to add “baby” but caught it in time. “No way. I’m working for. . . . Well, I can’t tell you, but it’s the good guys.”
“Oh, come off it,” she said. Her eyes were even harder now, and she shifted the gun on her hip, dropped the barrel lower. Toward him. “You must think I’m the most gullible woman walking. Cut the bullshit.”
“Dead straight, Miranda,” he pleaded. “No lie. They sent me here under deep cover to penetrate this outfit. Report back what’s going on down here. And I’ve been doing just that. Hey, it’s not easy, either. I’ve been shot at by pygmies and jets, damn near chopped in half by bolo knives, nearly flattened an hour ago by a herd of stampeding tamaracks. Or whatever they call them. Those black guys with the long horns? Buffalo.”
“Tamaraus,” Miranda said. “And you’re full of it.” Her thumb was on the AK’s safety.
“Millikan’s dead,” he said. His voice cracked this time. He checked it with an effort. “I killed him. Back there in the jungle. Drove him in front of that herd of . . . those things. And they smashed him flat. That’s when I decided to split. Come back to the boat, get across to Mindanao, report the whole damn deal.”
“Ha.”
“But Torres is still alive,” Curt almost yelled. “Millikan’s right-hand man. A mean bastard, worse than Millikan even. They’ve got a big ship back there, behind the beach, up the channel. I know what Torres’s plans are. Just get me to your people, and I’ll tell them how to stop him. I’ll help you beat him.”
Miranda shook her head slowly from side to side. She was smiling, but there was a bitter twist to it. When it came to hogwash, Curt could swill it with the best of them. But there was just enough truth in what he said to make it remotely possible. The gunboat, for instance. And the Negritos, those indigenous freedom fighters Sôbô talked about. She wondered about Millikan, though. If he really was dead, maybe this killing would stop. Without a leader the Tausuqs might fall apart, or even join with the MNLF revolt, which was certainly more in their interests than serving some off-island underling like this Torres. Maybe Sôbô ought to know about this, question Curt himself. Venganza couldn’t be far ahead. She didn’t dare look around to estimate how far, though. The cockpit was small, and Curt could easily jump her. She felt a knot of anger and indecision tighten suddenly in her stomach. She made up her mind.
“Kneel down,” she told Curt. “Behind the wheel. Good. Now lash the wheel on this course. That’s right. Put your hands on top of your head. Okay, now walk forward slowly on your knees, over to the lee gunwale.”
Oh, God, Curt thought. She’s going to do it. His vision started to blur, thin out in quick, white starbursts. He thumped forward on his knees. He heard her walk up behind him, barefoot, the muzzle of the AK cold and round on his neck.
“Lean your chin on the gunwale,” she said.
“Miranda, don’t. Please don’t.”
She laughed, and he heard something click. He passed out.
Miranda tied his hands behind his back with a length of small stuff, then his ankles, then cinched both ties together so he couldn’t move. She went aft and unlashed the wheel. She steered for Venganza, only half a mile ahead.
“What the hell happened to you?”
“It was just like the movies, Billy.” The commodore laughed happily. His khakis were ripped, splashed with blood, and a deep slash on his chin showed a glint of jawbone. Blood dripped from it down his chest. Dirty red knuckles were scraped ragged. But his eyes sparked bright as a little kid’s.
“Like those old Saturday-afternoon Westerns with the cattle stampeding and the cowboys caught in front of them. Those Negritos ran a whole herd of tamarau down on us, just when we’d started to hurt the guys at the gate. I killed three or four buffalo, Billy—pop, pop, pop, right through the eyes. Pretty shots, Billy, pretty shots. Then the gun was empty. They hit us. I dived into the lee of a bull I’d dropped, right at my feet, Billy. I tucked in tight against his back, and the ones behind came crashing over him. One of ’em kicked me, here, on the button. . . . Get a corpsman over here, Billy. Sock some stitches in this thing. . . . Then the tamarau swung toward the gate with the Gritos behind them. I cleared out with what men were left.” He stopped, took a bottle of Sc
otch from the table in the boat-shed bunker where they stood, and swallowed a slug. He poured Scotch from the neck of the bottle over the slash, winced, cursed, then drank some more. He sat down.
“You stopped the charge, I take it.”
“Just barely,” Torres said. “I’d rigged claymores either side of the entrance. Machine guns through the firing slots. Must be ten, twenty dead buffalo out there, and quite a few Negritos.”
“Pity to lose the buffalo meat,” the commo said. “Good heads out there, too—those ones I shot. That’s war, though. So what’s the overall situation?”
“Bad,” Billy said. “We’ve held the Negritos for now—I blocked the gate with that old backhoe we use to dredge the boat channel, but there’s heavy fire coming in from all sides now.”
The commo could hear it.
“There’s Moros in close on our left and right flanks, the Negritos behind us. Dozens of pump boats and kumpits out to seaward, laying it on us nonstop.”
“Anything heavy?”
“Just machine guns—.30 calibers, nothing more.”
“What about that old tub that came in with the pump boats?”
“Just that—a beat-up island trader they must have captured on their way here. There’s a slew of Moros on her, using her as a fort. But they’re only firing light stuff.” Billy paused. “You know, the more I think of it, the more this looks like a big pirate raid. Nothing political—not MNLF. They’d have mortars at least. And RPGs. These guys are just mundos from east of here, Jolo or Tawitawi. They probably heard there was good pickings over this way and took a shot at grabbing it away from us.”
“What about those Negritos, though?” the commo said. “They’re damned well organized—good weapons, and they know how to use them. You ever hear of Negritos cooperating with Moros? And these Gritos are certainly local, from right here on Balbal. I’ve seen sign of them plenty, out hunting in that backcountry.”
“I don’t know,” Billy said. He hadn’t thought of that. “What do you think?”
“I think this isn’t the time to puzzle over stuff like this. We can’t hold here. I hate sieges, anyway. We’ve got to sortie—Thunders and Moro Armado. Get some sea room where we can maneuver and put our speed and firepower to work.”
What I told you a long time ago, Billy thought. But aloud all he said was, “Good. I’ve got the engines turning over in the gunboat and swimmers out in the channel clearing those mines. We can send unmanned pump boats through ahead of the Thunders to blow whatever mines they miss.” He checked his watch: 1329. “We can be ready to roll in twenty minutes.”
“Where’s that corpsman with the surgi—”
Heavy explosions boomed from the wall outside the boat shed. Gunfire rose to a crescendo. They ran for the gunboat.
Sergeant Grande lay stiffly behind a downed tree trunk, one leg crooked and swollen, leaking blood through the field dressing that covered a cannister wound. The claymores had scythed through his attack like the strokes of a bolo. He’d hoped to carry the gate behind the tamarau and not have to rely on the war-era shaped charges or the vague time sense of the Negritos lighting their fuses. He watched the wall a hundred yards ahead of him closely. Any second now, he thought. . . . Then they went off—four ragged blasts—and through the red dust cloud of the shattered adobe the holes from the blasts came clear, the wall itself teetered above the holes, crumbling, falling with a great clattering roar. As it died away, he blew his police whistle. But the Negritos hadn’t waited—they were into the wall through the reeking smoke fumes, spears and bolos flashing, into the sudden rising burst of uncoordinated gunfire, stick grenades spinning ahead of them. And a contingent of Moros from the flanks was pouring in after the Negritos. Listening to the screams and explosions, Sergeant Grande opened his canteen and swallowed a mouthful of warm water. Cannister shot left big holes in a man. Big as ball bearings. He felt water dribbling through the second hole, the one in his stomach. It was cool on the hot edges of the wound.
“Here they come,” Sôbô said. He had the glasses to his eyes, watching the plume of steam from the Moro Armado’s stack creep slowly seaward through the treetops lining the channel. A half-dozen pump boats, unmanned and engines at top revs, had raced out first. Four of them hit mines and blew to splinters. After them came the green-hulled Thunders, hydroplaning already so that they would run as shallowly as possible through the mined outer channel. Their guns blazed ahead of them. Two Thunders hit mines and slewed onto the reef, burning, then exploding. That left six. They flared to engage the Moro pump boats. Tracers streaked both ways, rooster tails rose and fell, leaving wakes in crazy crosshatched patterns on the sea. The bow of the Moro Armado emerged, then her long white hull. Her pilot house, Sôbô could see, was protected by armored side plates. She bristled with machine-gun barrels, and the long muzzles of the three-inchers on her bow and stern cranked around to engage the slow-moving Moro kumpits. Flame spewed from the forward gun mount, and a kumpit suddenly lost its bow in the black burst of a hit. Another shell took it amidships, sending a geyser of water and shattered planks up and astern. The kumpit capsized and broke in half. The cannon banged again . . .
“Christ,” Culdee said, his voice choking. “Here comes Miranda.”
Sôbô saw the yawl close alongside, the stolen Thunder behind it. Kasim leapt up on Venganza’s deck, tied off the Thunder, and ran forward to help the sailboat. He reached down and came up with a limp, hog-tied bundle—a white man with a sick grin on his face and glazed eyes. Miranda followed.
“You must get clear of here,” Sôbô said to her. “We’re about to engage the enemy.”
“This is the guy that stole my boat,” Miranda said, not moving. She kicked the man on the deck. “This is Curt. He’s been working with Millikan. He says Millikan’s dead. Maybe you’ve won already. Maybe you can get them to quit.”
Sôbô swung his glasses onto the gunboat’s pilothouse. He saw a blond-haired white man in ripped khakis on the wing of the bridge. A short, dark, wide-shouldered man, also in khakis, stood beside him, directing fire from the gun mounts toward the remaining kumpits.
“Then who’s that?” Sôbô handed the glasses to Miranda. She looked. It was the man in the photos Kasim had showed them, so long ago now. She turned and kicked Curt again.
“You lying bastard! I should have shot you like I wanted to.”
“He’s alive?” Curt said. His eyes looked wide, hopeless. “He can’t be. The tamaracks . . .”
“No time for this now,” Culdee broke in. “Miranda, please just get back in the boat and clear out of here. It’s going to get damned hot in a minute or two.”
“What about him?” She booted Curt again.
“We kill him?” Kasim had his bolo out, grinning eagerly at Miranda.
“Wait a minute,” Curt pleaded. “Let me fight for you. I can help you. I can run a Thunder better than any of Millikan’s guys. I can fire that Redeye that’s on the boat. You need all the men you can get, don’t you?”
“Not that badly,” Miranda said.
Another kumpit lurched to a three-inch hit. Her crew dived overboard as heavy machine-gun fire from the gunboat lashed her decks.
“Put me in the boat with this guy,” he nodded at Kasim. “I’ll drive, he can shoot. If I try anything, he can kill me. I promise. I’ll fight for you.”
“Can the Redeye help us at all?” Culdee asked Sôbô.
“Possibly,” Sôbô said. “If Millikan has any aircraft available. We don’t know if he has, but I don’t know how to fire that system. None of us does.”
Moro pump boats lay awash, dead in the water, sinking under the superior firepower of the Thunders.
“I leave it up to you, Captain,” Sôbô said to Miranda. “But we must start fighting this ship soon, right now in fact, or we won’t have anything left to fight with.”
“Okay,” Miranda said. Over Sôbô’s shoulder she could see the Moro Armado turning her bow toward Venganza. Smoke and fire erupted from the forward gu
nmount. A shell screamed overhead and ricocheted off the water a hundred yards beyond them. “We’ll let the battle decide it. Throw him in the Thunder, Kasim. Let him drive. You shoot. If he does not fight—” She swung an imaginary bolo.
“Aye aye, Capitán,” Kasim said. His mouth drooped in disappointment, but he slung Curt down into the Thunder. Miranda paused at the rail.
“Get clear of this place,” Culdee said. He stepped over to her. “You’re right, we never should have come. But we’re here now. You’ve got what you came for, so please, please get clear of here.”
“Come with me, Dad.”
He took her in his arms and hugged her. She was strong. His own flesh, but stronger than he had ever been. He smelled gun smoke in her hair.
“I can’t,” Culdee said. “Turner’s over there. Alive. I haven’t gotten what I came for yet. And this ship needs me.” He kissed his daughter and turned her toward the sailboat. She dropped over the side, and he cast off her line.
She gave me back my life, he thought. Now I can throw it away.
THIRTY
Following the initial raids, ground assaults, and small-boat actions that provoked it, the Battle off Balbal (as it came to be known) evolved in four distinct phases: Sortie, Pursuit, the Duel of the Heavies, and Mop-Up. Commodore Millikan’s main force—gunboat Moro Armado and six Blue Thunder fast boats, on reaching the open sea, proceeded to destroy the enemy’s small craft and transports. Moro Armado’s main battery of three-inch guns, accurately directed by her exec, Warrant Gunner’s Mate William Torres, sank kumpits almost at will, while the fast boats, with their superior speed and maneuverability, easily shot up or swamped the attacking force’s outboard-powered pump boats. At this point Commodore Millikan did not yet recognize the threat posed by the attack force’s Q-boat. He ignored the pleas of Gunner Torres to take her under fire, arguing that the conservation of his limited supply of three-inch ammunition was of greater importance in the long run. This was the first of his mistakes.
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