Robert Jones - Blood Tide

“Hey, sorry,” Curt said. “I just thought—”

“Is okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

They passed the carpenters, still busy at their crosses.

“What’s that?” Curt asked. “New shrines in the works for the cathedral?”

“Not really,” Rosalinda said. She hooked her thumb back over her shoulder toward the graveyard. “Gólgota. The crosses are for the crucifixions on Good Friday.”

“You mean real people are going to get nailed to that wood up there?”

“Certainly,” she said, as if to a backward child. “We are a very religious people.”

Curt stopped and stared back up the hill toward the graveyard. It lay just under the bare, rocky crest. Moonlight made the coral blocks of the crypts look white as marble against the dark, kneelike thrust of the hilltop, and looking closely he could make out the shapes of three—no, four—no, half a dozen or more—crosses tilting crazily against the tropical stars.

“Gólgota,” Rosalinda said again as she took his hand in hers. “The Place of the Skull.” She tickled his palm again.

With the island of Negros abeam to starboard and Mindanao slumped black against the southern sky, Venganza plowed her way into the Sulu Sea. Culdee was at the wheel, watching for the dim lights of fishing boats off either bow. Surigao Strait had been thick with them, none paying the least attention, of course, to any known rules of the road. They’d stayed to the centerline of the broader Bohol Strait to avoid inshore boat traffic, and now, with the vast Sulu opening out dead ahead, the piloting would be less hazardous. Miranda came up from the galley with three mugs of coffee. Tonight they all had the midwatch. Freddie was up in the masthead watching for hazards and for the boats from Tawitawi that were to meet them.

“Hey, Freddie,” Culdee yelled up into the dark. “You want some jamoke?”

“Not now already,” the voice came back. “I got da lookout. You drink it for me, Boats.”

Culdee spun the wheel to meet a following sea, kicked up by a warm, steady northeast trade that smelled of fire and jungle. Loggers were burning slash high on Negros, and they could see fires flaring and guttering on Mindanao as well. Freddie said the Mindanao fires might be the work of the NPA or the MNLF, the two rebel groups working together in these mountains. To Culdee it all smelled of Vietnam.

“Last leg, Boats,” Miranda said.

“How far do you make it on the chart?”

“A little over six hundred kilometers, rhumb line from here to San Lázaro. That’s about three hundred twenty or thirty nautical miles. If this wind holds, we’ll make it in well under two days at eight knots. Did you read what the entry in The Philippine Pilot had to say about Lázaro?”

“Yeah.”

“Pretty freaky down there.”

“Flips are great bullshitters,” Culdee said. “If you thought Mark Twain could spin a tall tale, just ask a Manila jeepney driver about the dent in his front fender or the Band-Aid on his knuckle. You’ll hear a yarn that’ll turn your hair green.”

“But there must be something to it. All the other entries sound legitimate.”

“Well, if it was printed by any government printing office, especially one connected with navy brass anywhere, you can bet it’s hiding something. They’ve probably got some big top-secret military installation down there, covert operations up the ying-yang. They don’t want tourists hanging around, clicking cameras and talking to the hometown newspaper when they get back to wherever. Even the snoopiest American reporters didn’t see half of what went down in Vietnam.”

“I don’t know,” Miranda said. “Some of these far-out corners can be dangerous. We don’t even have any weapons aboard to speak of. Just the 12-gauge and that .30/30 of yours.”

“That’s all the blackbirders needed in these waters,” Culdee said. “And if it gets tougher, there’s that old punt gun of my granddad’s up in the fo’c’sle. It’s a 0-gauge—shoots a half-pound of shot with a load of black powder behind it. He called it Whiplash Willie, because that’s what you got when you fired it. Said he killed two hundred and nineteen sprig with it one night, with one shot, down in that little delta where I took you. Part of the loading instructions is to swallow two headache powders before you shoot, and two right after. A gun like that ought to scare these outlaws off.”

“Flashing light on the port bow,” Freddie yelled from the masthead. “Three short, two long, one short. They’re repeating it.”

“That’s the signal,” Miranda said. She grabbed a flashlight and ran for the rigging. “Bring her up into the wind, Boats.”

The outriggers roared out of the dark, then throttled back. Wiry brown men swarmed over the gunwales, all of them hung with bandoliers and automatic weapons. Some in sarongs, some in ridiculous double-knit Ban-Lon bell-bottoms, stained and ripped and garish in the running lights—electric blues, puke greens, dog-shit oranges—must’ve been some kind of special at the Sulu Sea K Mart. They were tough-looking little men, though, wiry as VC, but darker. Their weapons gleamed rustless, well oiled, when they caught the light. An older man stepped up to the helm and saluted Culdee.

“Permission to come aboard, sir,” he said in unaccented English. Then grinned in amazement at his success with the phrase.

“Granted,” Culdee said.

“Are you Captain Culdee already?”

“No,” Miranda said, coming up behind him. “I’m the skipper. What can I do for you?”

“I have these communication from Padre Cotinho,” he said, looking up at her with the same surprised grin. “Advising me to divulge to you anyway. Also many boxes of things for the storing of them in your ship’s belly.” His men were already swaying heavy crates onto the foredeck from a kumpit that had wallowed up behind them. The crates clanked faintly, with the heavy, businesslike sound of weapons, and Culdee smelled Cosmoline grease as they came aboard. Miranda took the canvas envelope from the little man’s hand, and he saluted smartly. She squared her shoulders, half-smiling, and saluted him back.

“Let’s look at these in the chart room.”

Freddie came in with a basket of melons, oysters, and what smelled like a rich fish stew. The mundo had given it to him.

“Okay,” Miranda said, after reading the brief note from the padre. “Curt’s there, all right.” She flipped quickly through the sheaf of photographs enclosed with the letter. “And here’s Seamark —shit, he’s repainted her and rigged her as a yawl! And Curt and Brillo and some guy he says is Commodore Millikan.” She handed the photos to Culdee. “Cotinho says Curt is working for this Millikan, running dope in from Thailand. It’s a big operation, he says. Fast boats and lots of guns. I don’t know what this means to our plans.”

Culdee had been staring long and solemnly at one of the photographs.

“I know what it means,” he said. He slid the snapshot across the chart table to Miranda. She saw a middle-aged man with a handsome but rather weak face. Like the faces of the yachtsmen she’d crewed for so long ago. He seemed to be giving orders to someone out of the picture, and his face wore a look of weary petulance. He had on a dark blue baseball cap over his close-cropped hair. The cap bore no slogans or insignia, but there was gold leaf on its bill. Underneath, in a cramped, spiky handwriting—Cotinho’s fist, all right—it said, “Commodore Millikan, U.S.N.”

“Millikan, my ass,” Culdee said. “I know that guy. He’s the fucker who jobbed me in North Vietnam, who got me kicked out of the navy.” He grabbed an oyster from Freddie’s gift basket and shucked it with his rigging knife. The juice ran down over his scarred, lumpy knuckles. “What it means,” he said, “what it means is that this boat has the right name for both of us. Venganza , hey? We’ve both got a shipmate to kill down there.”