Robert Jones - Blood Tide

He couldn’t pray in this cathedral, though. His men wouldn’t approve. But Billy Torres, his exec, prayed there every Sunday, prayed there sincerely, humbly, from the depths of his black Filipino heart. He was as cruel as he was pious. Perhaps the two went hand in hand. At least here they seemed to. Torres had told him the other day that on Good Friday there would be three crucifixions in the city—voluntary crucifixions, like the ones you could see for the goodness of your soul every Holy Week in that rice paddy in Barangay San Pedro, outside San Fernando de Papanga on Luzon. “Ours are better than that,” Torres assured him. “Last year one of the men died. Actually bled to death on the cross from the holes in his feet. The spike nicked an artery. Bled out before they could pull him down. You ought to come along with me this year—the Tausuqs think it’s the only worthwhile rite in the whole Catholic religion. Put you in good with the men.”

“Why don’t you be my surrogate, Billy?” the commodore said. “You really seem to enjoy it.” Torres had laughed in that way he had. Like when he gunned down boat people, or even his own countrymen. Torres pulled it all together, every sadistic trait of the three cultures that made up his background—every Filipino’s, for that matter—Malay, Spanish, American. Along with a few tricks learned from the Japanese during the war. Wicked mean cultures, sure enough. Still, for all that, Torres was a sissy compared with some of the men the commodore had known in the course of his career. On a scale of one to ten, Afghans ranked at the top; the Reclamos in Mozambique, the Simbas in Kivu (what remained of them), the Somalis in Eritrea—all black Africans rated right up there. Brits, Boers, and Rhodesians barely got on the scale, at least those he’d known. They didn’t really enjoy it. Not like the Koreans, or the Vietnamese, for that matter . . .

His beer had gone warm, but the sea breeze hadn’t come up yet. He didn’t want to get all sweaty climbing out of the hammock. “Rosalinda!” he yelled in to the housekeeper, warbling it almost playfully—Rrrosa- leen -dah! “Could you bring me another San Mig, por favor? ” He loved to twit her with the odd Spanish phrase now and then. Though Rosalinda Aguinaldo-Musa (what a name) was from Luzon, where Spanish was almost as prevalent as English, she knew barely a word of the language. Her English was slangy and fluent. A nice old bag, Rosalinda—Christ, she was probably younger than he, but it was different with a woman—and a damn hard worker. Millikan III had hired her after laying her a few times up in Subic, swore she was stone loyal—he’d had Washington run a security check on her. “Throw her a screw now and then,” III had advised him, “and she’ll follow you anywhere. She’ll die for you.” Well, IV didn’t value life quite that highly, though he didn’t tell his predecessor in so many words. She must be getting it someplace else, he thought now, as she brought him the beer and went back to her household accounts, because she’s certainly happy enough.

Down on the beach a group of naked children were dancing and skipping in a cluster, laughing as they pointed to something on the sand. He took up his binoculars and focused in on them. They had caught a large crab and torn off one of its legs. It was scuttling in backward circles, its claws raised in futile protest. A little boy reached down, quick as a snake, and yanked off another leg. The circles got tighter. The children’s laughter quickened, musical as church bells at dawn. Cruelty, the commodore thought. It’s as natural to us as breathing or sex or eating.

He hadn’t always felt that way. As a young line officer, newly hatched from the academy, be firmly believed he was defending a better, gentler way of life, a seagoing crusader for the unfettered pursuit of happiness. He’d always had the gift of tongues, and when he applied to the Monterey Language School to study Vietnamese, he was quickly accepted. On graduation (at the top of his class) he was tapped for the ONI. Then began his postgraduate studies in the field—Cruelty 101.

He was shocked at the joy the torturers took in their work. It was the same on both sides, everywhere. Of course he was naive. He hadn’t learned much yet about human potential. He’d even felt guilty about his first mission in the north. He’d been planted in a POW camp on the coast to foment a breakout while at the same time ensuring that the American prisoners would be massacred when they tried it. The hope, as he understood it, was that when word of the slaughter leaked out Stateside, it would turn the tide of anti-war protest and somehow stiffen the American will to win. Kind of a cross between the Malmédy Massacre and the old movie Brute Force .

It almost worked. He’d drummed up enthusiasm for the break surreptitiously, using the tap code when his cellmate was out, leaving notes in the head or the shower, and meanwhile brownnosing the camp commander and his swishy assistant. In the end his cellmate queered the deal. He had to get himself tortured to prove he wasn’t slimy—a collaborator. But the damage had been done. Only four men—all enlisted—made the break finally. Only one of them was killed. It was not his cellmate, who was in solitary when the break failed. Too bad for the poor sap. Had he died, they wouldn’t have had to deep-six him from the navy when he was finally released. There’d been talk of arranging a convenient accident for the man in Manila or Subic Bay, but the bastard had won some kind of medal in Korea, and the black-shoe line types wouldn’t hear of it. Instead they busted him back a notch and discharged him. “You won’t have to worry about him crossing your track anywhere down the line,” they assured the commodore. “He won’t be able to get there. Couldn’t afford it on his retirement pay.”

Culdee. Sure, that was his name. Typical old bosun. Dead stupid. Crusty on the outside, mush at the core. Had the look of a Mick boozer about him. A brawler and a sentimentalist. Wooden men in iron ships. Well, he was probably dead by now.

A sail showed on the horizon and beat in on long reaches toward Lázaro Harbor. The commodore watched it through his glasses—yawl-rigged with a blue hull and high sheer forward, a pretty little vessel. The sea breeze had finally kicked up, and the boat had a bone in her teeth. The commodore couldn’t make out the man at the helm, so he swung from his hammock and walked down to the beach. The angle was better there. It was a round-eye in a pirate bandanna, with two of Billy’s Tausuqs on deck. Appropriate. Must be that kid Torres mentioned, from Zambo. The dope-running boat bum who’d worked that drowning dog routine up near Bugsuk Island last month. The commodore’s first inclination when Billy told him about it was to dust the kid. He could only be bad news. But then the commodore realized it might be good to have a bad news round-eye on tap. That way if Manila or some rival agency in Washington ever started snooping around, they could throw the boat bum to them.

Something nipped his foot. He jumped back and looked down. It was the crab the children had been torturing. Legless now, it had nonetheless managed to crawl over to him on its stumps and pinch him with its one remaining claw.

The commodore stomped it flat with his bare heel.

NINETEEN

“Ever driven one of these, Cappy?”

They were standing in a big, shedlike boathouse that covered a complex of rickety piers. From the sea or air its thatched roofs and roughly finished mangrove supporting poles would make it look like a crude structure slapped together by Third World carpenters with hangovers, a lot of palm fronds, a coil of binder twine, and about six nails. The sort of mañana architecture that blows off to Bolivia in the first strong breeze (HUNDREDS DIE!) or collapses in a loud fart. But Curt could see that the thatching overlay a smoothly finished and probably steel-reinforced concrete roof. The corner posts were most likely disguised the same way. And certainly the six boats that lapped at their moorings alongside were top of the line.