Robert Jones - Blood Tide

Billy, holding a heavy canvas parcel at arm’s length, watched them pass.

“What was that about?” he asked the commodore a moment later.

“Religious freaks,” the commodore fumed. “Born-agains. Witnesses. I don’t know. But, Christ, they’re persistent. You got it?”

“Yes, but you’d better put on a gas mask.” Billy laid the parcel on the glass-topped table. Even tightly sealed it smelled disgusting.

The commodore took a deep breath and opened the canvas. Hold on to your lunch, he ordered his stomach. He put on his half-glasses and bent over the thing. Most of the face had been nibbled away by reef fish, but the side that had lain on the bottom still bore large patches of skin. He fetched the magnifying glass that came with his compact edition of the Oxford English Dictionary and peered closely.

“Beats me,” he said at last. “Round-eye sure enough, but he could be a Russian, a Brit, a Frenchman, even an American for all we know.”

“He is,” Torres said. “American, that is. He’s a fly-boy from MATS in Manila, name of Phillip Chalmers. I did some business with him through the shipping line a while back. He was angling to get in on the heroin traffic, or at least he seemed to be. He’s also the guy who recommended Curt to us.”

The commo mixed himself a stiff drink at the portable mahogany bar—Glenlivet on ice, no twist—and gestured to Billy to help himself. They went out onto the lawn. The lanai would probably stink for a week. He lighted one of the five Manila cigarillos he allowed himself each day and paced the close-grown, dewy grass in the fading dusk.

“CIA?” he asked Torres at last. “Maybe DEA? We’ve got plenty of enemies in Washington.”

“Could be,” Torres said.

“Take that thing down to the photo lab and get some close-ups. Good ones, in strong light. Bracket the bastard. Get me some decent snaps, and we’ll send them to ONI back home, maybe someone knows this guy. Then put the head in the freezer, double-wrapped. We may need it as evidence somewhere down the line.”

“What about Curt?”

“He’s no threat,” the commo said. “There’s no indication he’s anything but a fast-boat bum, a runner. We’ve checked out his background, and he’s okay. Small potatoes. This Chalmers probably fed him to us to improve his own image—if he was a spook, that is. He could just as well have been working for some other heroin conduit aiming to take us over. Keep a close eye on Curt, though. We can eliminate him whenever we feel it’s necessary.”

“Well, sir,” Billy said, “if it comes to that, and I hope it does, I’d like to volunteer for the assignment.”

It was dark by the time Venganza reached her destination—a long, low island enclosed by a coral reef on which the surf pounded in rhythmic, luminous explosions.

“What is this place?” Miranda asked Kasim.

“Isla Perniciosa,” he said. “How you say, Island of Harms’? ‘Of Dangers’? Not much here, just bad culebras , bad snakes, hey? And plenty mosquitoes.” He whined like a million of them, then laughed for joy. “You bring down sails now,” he said.

Kasim piloted the schooner through the reef and motored around to the northwest side of the island. The channel, in starlight, looked sharp-edged in places, as if it had been blasted by dynamite and shaped by capable engineers. A concrete and coral-block mole projected into the lagoon at the end of the zigzagging channel, and Kasim brought the schooner alongside it. Men waited in the dark for their mooring lines. The bollards on the mole looked sturdy, businesslike, not the usual makeshift mangrove stumps seen on other docks in this part of the world. They tied up behind what looked like a floating crane, its arm bent dark against the darkness.

“These men take care of ship,” Kasim said, pointing to the hands at the mooring lines. “We go now, you meet Capitán Katana.”

“Who’d you say he was?” Culdee asked. “Cotinho’s naval adviser? I thought Cotinho was just a simple priest, a missionary kind of guy.”

“ Sí ,” Kasim said, smiling happily. “ Misionario , Padre Cotinho ‘missionary’! Sure enough! Capitán Katana his good friend, his ayudante —‘adjutant,’ right? You meet now, we go.”

“Chinese, he said before,” Culdee whispered to Miranda. “Probably a Chi Com—Red China’s everywhere out here, one way or another. You know him, Freddie?”

“Nope,” Freddie said. He looked off into the night.

Kasim led them inland, along a narrow, winding path of crushed coral toward a low ridge that loomed dark against the stars. Sharp cactus thorns plucked at their clothes in the tighter corners. They were all wobbly-legged, still swaying from the sea. Land crabs scuttled noisily away. Once or twice swifter things slithered off into the cactus, thick and leathery. Snakes? Maybe just lizards. Kasim’s mosquitoes were hungry, all right. Under the brow of the ridge they came to a heavy steel door set in the coral slope. Kasim banged on it twice, paused, banged once, then three times more. A slot opened in the door, and an eye peered out. What’s this, Culdee thought, a pernicious Filipino speakeasy? The door opened.

At the end of a low corridor cut into the concrete they came to a second steel door, this one open and secured. Beyond it, a bunker. Sure, this must be the old Jap sub base the Pilot mentioned. The walls were hung with maps and charts—Culdee recognized a large map of Southeast Asia studded with red and blue marking pins, and a detailed chart of the Flyaways similarly marked. In the center of the room was a chart table, lighted by an old-fashioned gooseneck lamp. Moros stood around it, peering down at another chart. A taller man, Asian also, from the shape of his shaved, flat-backed head, stood with a pointer in his hand. He wore starched, military-looking khakis. The Moros looked up as they entered. The tall man turned, dropping his pointer. As it fell, he caught it on the toe of his shoe and flipped it, sending it spinning back up in the air. “Bloody hell!” he exclaimed, snatching the pointer. He faced them now.

“Ah,” he said, a warm smile on his face. “The Yank battlewagon has at last arrived. Welcome, shipmates!” He stepped toward them. “I’m Captain Katana. But you may call me Sôbô.”

Rosalinda came onto the lanai, her arms laden with dishes. She and the boys had cleaned the table thoroughly, and the stink of Lysol had replaced the other one. Dinner was already half an hour late, and she had yet to set the table. She looked around for the duty houseboy. The commodore stood at the far end of the lanai, sipping a cocktail.

“Where’s Daoud, sir?” she asked.

“I sent him out to the trash barrels,” the commodore replied. “Some religious types brought me a bundle of their trash this evening and left it on the stoop. I told Daoud to dump it. And not to stop and read it along the way. That kid’s always got his nose in a book, especially if it’s written in English.”

Not Daoud, she thought. Oh, Mother of God, not Daoud . . .

The explosion shivered the screens and set the lamps swaying. Rosalinda dropped the dishes with a crash that echoed the blast. Bits of shrubbery splattered against the porch as the flash faded to red and yellow flames.

By the time they reached it, the fire was already dying. Daoud lay on his back ten feet from the flames. His hands were gone. His face was black and red meat with a few white teeth stuck in it. His chest had burst open. He was dead.

Shredded paper drifted down from the dark, falling into the flickering light. For a moment the commodore thought it was snowing.

TWENTY-THREE