Mark Lee - The Canal House

A faint tapping sound came from a mud-wall hut near one of the salt ovens. Battis and Mainla raised their rifles and Gurung ran forward with the two younger soldiers. The sergeant whispered something in Nepalese and pointed with his forefinger. You go left. You go right. He crouched beside the road ditch, ready to fire, while his men split up into two groups and flanked the hut. They darted around to the back, then reappeared a minute later.

“Nothing to worry about,” Mainla said. “The wind pushed a sheet of roofing against the wall.”

There were no land mines and the men kicked the palm fronds away. Lieutenant Mitchell drove a little faster and we reached a flat area where the road moved inland from the sea. Our convoy slowed down again as we crossed a bridge and reached the outskirts of Liquica. The village mercado was on the left side of the road. It had once been an open arcade with merchant stalls, but someone had blown up the water tank and set the stalls on fire. All that remained was a few pieces of charred wood and white columns. It looked like the ruins of an ancient city.

We crossed a second bridge, then stopped on the outskirts of Liquica. Jenkins ordered most of his men to get out of the Land Rovers and dispersed them on both sides of the road. The vehicles stayed back as the platoon moved toward the center of the village. Most of the buildings in the village had been burned down a few days earlier and the soot-covered walls provided cover. Standing on the back of the pickup truck, I leaned my elbows on the roof of the truck cab and peered through my telephoto.

Just past a graveyard, the road ended in a T. Two burned-out cars formed a roadblock in the middle of the intersection and a group of about twenty militiamen stood behind the barrier. Even from a distance I could see they were nervous. The young men kept shouting at each other, waving rifles, and running back and forth. They looked like a street gang getting ready to defend their territory.

Jenkins parked sideways in the middle of the road and the drivers got out of their vehicles. Daniel, Julia, and Sister Xavier took cover behind the pickup while I remained on the truck bed.

“You’re too exposed, Nicky. Get down,” Julia said.

“Just a second.”

“Hurry up, Nicky,” Daniel said. “Take the picture and come over here.”

Jenkins stood behind the dog Land Rover and wiped the sweat from his face with an olive green handkerchief. “Remember what I told you this morning!” he told his men. “Only fire your weapon to protect yourself or a civilian!”

Mitchell was farther up the road, crouched behind a concrete wall. “Excuse me, sir. But it looks like they want to fight.”

“I bloody know what they want to do,” Jenkins said. “But the rules of engagement require that we—”

A young man wearing a blue T-shirt raised his rifle and fired in our direction. He emptied the entire ammunition clip, then screamed something and jabbed his right fist like a boxer. The other militiamen crouched behind the burned cars and began firing. The gunshots had a quick, flat sound like someone beating a rug.

“Hold the point and keep them busy,” Jenkins told Mitchell. “Gurung, get the Parker and take care of those bastards. Make sure you don’t hit any civilians.”

“Yes sir.”

Jenkins led his squad through the burned-out houses on the side of the road. I figured they were going to circle around through the deserted village and flank the intersection. I jumped off the truck and crouched down beside Daniel. We were probably too far away to get picked off by a sniper, but over the years I’d seen several people hit by random bullets.

“That’s the Red and White Iron militia,” Sister Xavier said. “Some of the people are from Liquica. Others come from the villages south of here. They are young men who liked to sit in the square at night and talk about politics—then the Indonesians took them to the police station and gave them rifles.”

Daniel was taking notes. “And they started killing people?”

“First they set up a roadblock to look for guerrillas, then they shot a man who was trying to protect his daughter. After that first killing, the devil entered their hearts.”

“Why did they force the villagers down to the beach?”

“They’re hostages.”

I left the truck and joined Gurung beside the Land Rover. Opening the back, he took out a sniper rifle with a telescopic sight. I followed him as he sprinted up the road to the concrete wall. Mitchell and his men were crouched down, coming up occasionally to fire their rifles.

“Start with that man wearing the blue shirt,” Mitchell said. “He really is quite annoying.”

Gurung placed his elbows on top of the wall and chambered a round. “I can see him, Lieutenant.”

“Go ahead then.”

Gurung peered through the sight, waited a few seconds and squeezed the trigger. The rifle made a cracking sound and the man in the blue T-shirt was hit in the chest. There was a flash of blood and then he fell backward. The militiamen stopped shooting for few seconds, then blasted away at the same time. A bullet ricocheted off the road and smashed through the Land Rover’s windshield. Gurung chambered a new round, moved the rifle slightly, then killed a second man.

I peered over the wall and got two quick photographs as the militiamen panicked and ran toward the beach. Gunfire came from Jenkins’s squad and a third militiaman was hit. A bullet spun him around and he collapsed like a marionette that had just been dumped into a box. Lieutenant Mitchell ordered me to stay behind the wall as he ran forward with his soldiers. I drank some lukewarm water from a plastic bottle as Sister Xavier came up the road with Daniel and Julia.

“We’re supposed to stay here,” I said.

“Why? There’s no danger. The militia has run away.”

We followed Sister Xavier past the burned-out cars to where the three dead militiamen lay sprawled on the road. Corporal Mainla and Private Rai picked up the abandoned rifles, then dragged the bodies over to the grass, leaving three ribbony streaks of blood on the asphalt. The shrill brightness of the color startled me.

Mainla pointed down the hill at the beach. “There are many people there,” he said to Julia. “No water. No food. It’s very bad.”

Liquica had once been a resort town for the Portuguese and there were still a few remnants from that era. An elaborate wrought-iron fence surrounded the local Catholic church, and banyan trees spread their branches and shaded the street. Weeds had overwhelmed a cobblestone road that led down a hill to the ocean. Looking across the beach, I could see the remains of a pagoda, changing rooms, and an outdoor restaurant. Everything had been destroyed by grenades.

Near the edge of the beach, the Portuguese had dug into the hillside and built a tennis court. Retaining walls ran along two sides of the court and the rest was marked off by a chain-link fence that had once captured wayward tennis balls. I could imagine Portuguese children darting back and forth with their rackets while their parents sat beneath striped umbrellas and watched them play. Now the militia had turned the tennis court into an enormous cage to hold their prisoners. Hundreds of women, old people, and children sat on the court. Some had taken plastic tarps and constructed open shelters to protect themselves from the sun. The Gurkhas stood near the fence and stared at the villagers, but no one approached the crowd. There were too many people. It was too big a problem. Even Captain Jenkins looked intimidated.

The villagers didn’t move until they saw Sister Xavier. People shouted her name, pushed through holes in the fence, and surrounded her. Standing in the middle of the crowd, Sister Xavier tried to find out what had happened in the last twenty-four hours. Some of the information was confusing and there were arguments about who was dead and who had run away. An old lady began to weep about her missing grandson; another person shouted about the lack of water. This man was shot, that girl was raped, the militia had set the school on fire.