Robert Jones - Blood Tide

He slurped the oyster and grabbed another, his knife wet in the lamplight. Freddie, watching, smiled.

As dawn broke behind them, Venganza made all sail and squared her yards for San Lázaro.

Part Four

THE DANGEROUS GROUND

TWENTY-ONE

The last pickup was scheduled for sunset at a small dirt airstrip on a Thai island called Ko Kut, just across the Cambodian border. The planes would be old ADs, the prop-driven Spads from the early days of the Vietnam War, now foisted off on the Thai Air Force by the U.S. They’d be coming down from Ban Sattahip, via Chanthaburi and Trat, loaded with smack. Curt glassed the island from a mile offshore, scanning the ’groves until he picked up the jetty he’d been told to look for. Its pilings were spiky with barnacles now that the tide was out. A trail from the red smear of the runway atop the bluff led downhill to it. There was a tin-roofed hut at one end of the runway with a radar mast and a wind sock on opposite corners and a jeep parked near the door. The radar dish was looking northwest. Then it swung due north and locked there, quivering. Curt was about to put down the binoculars when the door of the hut burst open. Two men ran out and jumped into the jeep. They disappeared in a cloud of red dust. A moment later he heard the planes. They were jets.

Billy Torres, in the other Thunder, heard them, too. He looked over to Curt and shook his head. A definite no. Billy grabbed a flak jacket from the gunwale and put it on. Then he put on a steel helmet. Then he picked up the rocket launcher. Well, Curt thought, when in Rome. . . . But he couldn’t find his Kevlar vest. Or his hard hat. Or the fucking Redeye missile unit, either—too late now, anyway.

The jets, two of them, droop-nosed F-4 Phantoms, swept in low from the north in echelon, so low over the backbone of the island that their exhaust swirled in the thorn scrub. They broke right and left and bored in on the Thunders. The cannon flashes started when the jets were still half a mile away. Curt jammed the throttles forward and felt the Thunder leap out, straight toward a column of geysers spouting and collapsing where the cannon shells had hit the water. He spun the wheel hard right and shot inshore, along the reverse line of the cannon fire. He could taste salt spray hanging in the air when he bounced over the seething holes in the water. The jets had passed overhead by now and were sweeping at wave-top level in opposite circles. The Phantoms were painted brown and green, but they bore no numbers or national markings. Their low speed caused them to wallow in the heavy, wet air. They had his range now. . . .

Out of the corner of his eye, Curt glimpsed a brilliant flash. Billy had the Redeye tube at his shoulder, he saw. Smoke trailed lazily downwind. The Phantom on his left suddenly disappeared in a boil of white light. Bits of it rained down, pocking the sea, and one hunk whined over Curt’s head. Another splatted hard against the gas drums stored aft, but nothing blew up. He ducked, about half an hour too late, as usual. The remaining jet kicked in its afterburners and climbed steeply toward heaven. Curt saw Billy tracking it with the rocket launcher, but he didn’t fire a second round. Maybe better that way: let the survivor go home and think about it. Billy looked over to Curt again and pumped one fist, up and down, rapidly. Make tracks. Then he pointed toward the Ko Kut shore. Follow me.

They lay inshore among the mangroves until it was dark. The mosquitoes were fierce.”

“What the fuck was that all about?” Curt asked.

“Who cares?” Billy said. “Happens sometimes. Always has, always will. Somebody didn’t lay the right number of bahts on the right colonel? Or maybe the wrong general. Or maybe it’s just some old-school Thai who refused to play the game.” He pulled a San Mig from his cooler and popped it, then took a series of long, noisy swallows. “You see that mother go boom, though? I love that, when that happens. Thank Christ these Thais can’t shoot worth shit.”

Billy finished the beer and threw the bottle over the side. Crabs scuttled in the mangrove roots. He stooped over and lugged something limp up to the gunwale. It was a Tausuq with no head, Billy’s crewman. His T-shirt had said something witty, Curt remembered, but now it was obscured by blood. Billy slipped him over the side. Blood washed away as the body wallowed in the shallows. The T-shirt said, NO PAIN, NO GAIN. Not so witty after all. The crabs hit the water running and headed toward the Tausuq. Chow time.

“You got a beer to spare?” Curt asked Billy. “I’m fresh out.”

“Tough luck,” Billy said. He popped himself another and chugged it down. “You shouldn’t drink so much on duty.” He tossed the bottle at the dead Tausuq. It bounced off his chest. Curt’s Tausuq hissed and looked away.

“Okay,” Billy said. “That’s it. Let’s blow this pop stand.”

They headed back east toward Lázaro. Curt’s Tausuq was sulking in the rear of the cockpit, squatting back against the reserve gas drums.

“Easy, Abdul,” Curt told him. “It’s over now.”

“Never over,” Abdul said. “Always just beginning already.”

Every week, usually on a Thursday, a Philippine Navy PBM-3 Mariner flew in to Balbal and landed on the water off the lee shore. The commo had another installation there, top secret, with radio masts and concrete bunkers. It was hidden back in the jungle, up a narrow but deep channel through the mangroves. You couldn’t see it from sea or air unless you knew it was there.

The weekly Mariners had no markings on them, but Curt knew from talking to the flying boat’s crew that they were Flip navy. “You come Davao-side sometime, Joe,” a friendly first-class aviation machinist told him. “I make nice party for you. We got pretty girl Davao-side. We eat kilawin , raw fish with soy sauce put lead in your pencil, drink lotsa tuba wine, fuck them Chinese and Hapon girl plenty. Make ’em go ee-tai , hey? Ouchy-ouchy, hey! You and me, we eat durian for dessert.”

“What’s durian?”

“Durian better than Hapon girl for dessert,” the first-class said. “Smells like shit, tastes like heaven.” He stooped back into the plane and threw a mango-like fruit to Curt. “Try it,” he said, “you like it.”

The first-class was right on all counts.

After loading their cargo—scag, opium, bricks of Thai hash—the Flips took off and shaped a course to Mindanao. Curt checked their flight log once when the crew was ashore. Davao, all right. Just the facts, ma’am.

After the first run Billy stayed on the beach. “He’s trigger-happy,” the commodore told Curt. “He thinks ordnance grows on trees. He thinks its like Chinese firecrackers. Redeyes cost money—a fortune! You should be able to dodge those dorks when they shoot at you. This is a high-tech boat, capable of incredibly evasive maneuvers.”

“How come they shot at us?” Curt asked.

“Somebody blew it in Bangkok,” the commodore said. He threw a piercing look at Curt. “Why?”

“You ought to get rid of that Bangkok dude.”

“Maybe I did.”

“Who was he? Just for my own curiosity.”

“Yours not to reason why, Cappy,” the commodore said. “Leave that part to me.”

The Sea Witch was anchored out in the roadstead now. Two or three nights a week Rosalinda came aboard after dark, from a bumboat, and she and Curt made love in the wide bunk in the captain’s cabin. Curt had been right about her. She was hot. She had a mouth on her like sizzling liver. Brillo seemed to like her, too; he always got on well with women. Rosalinda cooked good chow—a hot coconut soup she called binakol; dinengdeng , which she made from eggplant, squash, and the leafy green lettucelike kangkong and splashed heavily with bagoong , a spicy sauce of fish and shrimp fermented in brine; and adobo stews of chicken and pork spiked with vinegar, soy, garlic, chunks of liver, and—sometimes—chilies as hot as anything Curt had blistered his tongue on in Mexico. These fires were duly extinguished with fruit salads chilled in shaved ice—papaya, mango, tart little red bananas, guava, lanzon, chico, rambutan, and—of course—the malodorous, melt-in-your-mouth durian. “We call this halo-halo in Tagalog,” she said as she dished up the salad. “Means ‘mix-mix.’ Good eats, hey?” Curt could only groan and grin. Christ, he was getting fat !