Robert Jones - Blood Tide

Two more Thunders were turning slow circles around them, awaiting orders. Only now did the commo become aware of them. His fury surged again.

“Get them!” he yelled at the boat crews. He pointed seaward. They stared back at him, stupidly. “The other boat! Our boat! Get it! Get it back! But don’t kill the people in it! ” Two Thunders roared out in pursuit of the first.

It was a hard climb through the Balbal jungle, but Sôbô seemed tireless. Culdee’s legs were quivering after twenty minutes, and his breath came short, fast, and ragged. His mouth tasted of stale salt from the sweat cascading into it faster than he could spit.

“Hey, hold up!” he gasped at last. Sôbô turned, surprised. Culdee was slumped beside the muddy trail. “What’s the hurry?” he puffed.

“Sorry, old man. Didn’t notice. Here, have a swallow—it’s just cool water, no whiskey.” Culdee accepted the canteen gratefully. He washed out his mouth, spat, then swallowed two long pulls. His breath was coming back.

“Too long at sea,” he said. “No exercise except steering and and hauling. Sorry.”

“No problem. My fault actually. Mea culpa , old bean.”

They were heading up a steep mountain trail that was leading them into Balbal’s interior. Two short, dark, naked men with ritual scars on their faces and chests had met them at the beach. They had kinky peppercorn hair, black wiry beards, and carried spears. Negritos, Sôbô had explained briefly. He had to see their leaders this morning. It was vital.

“You’re in pretty damned good shape,” Culdee said when he could. “How the hell do you do it? You’ve got to be pushing seventy.”

“Sixty-eight,” Sôbô answered. “I was the youngest member of my class at the naval academy on Eta Jima. But I try to keep fit. Eat a lot of seaweed, that’s the secret. Popeye the Sailorman. That wasn’t really spinach in those cans—it was seaweed, old top. Make a lightfoot lad of you again every time.”

“Well, I wish you’d brought a can or two along on this expedition,” Culdee said.

It took them another hour to reach the Negrito camp, proceeding at a slower pace until Culdee’s legs could handle a steady rhythm. At one point the two guides, who had been moving so silently and invisibly that Culdee had almost forgotten them, suddenly came darting back. They looked fearful and kept jabbing their spears toward the jungle canopy ahead. One of them was whispering to Sôbô.

“They say it’s a balbal , the giant man-eating flying squirrel for which this island is named,” Sôbô explained. “It swoops down out of the trees and licks up Negritos with its sticky tongue, then takes them off to tiffin. Actually, it’s a haribon , a very large, monkey-eating eagle. One of the largest and rarest eagles in the world. The bird books say you’ll find it only on Mindanao. Let them think so. I’ve seen them once or twice before, coming up here to chat with these fellows.”

Sôbô withdrew a small automatic pistol from inside his shirt and gestured the guides forward. They moved cautiously. Then Sôbô crouched. “There,” he whispered to Culdee.

The big bird stood erect on a limb, glaring down at them. Its hooked beak was red with blood. One great yellow talon was buried in the throat of a very dead monkey. The eagle rattled its beak and screamed—a long, metallic, blood-chilling scream. Then it flapped off into the canopy with the dead monkey trailing from its claws.

“New addition to your life list,” Sôbô said, smiling back at Culdee.

The Negrito village was a small circle of huts surrounding a thatched longhouse in a clearing. Blue, sour-smelling smoke trailed listlessly up from cook fires and pooled under the jungle canopy. Small, dark women with breasts too large for their frail bodies darted away when they appeared. Their children toddled after them. Men came out of the longhouse to greet them. With them was a taller, lighter-skinned Negrito in what looked like an army jungle uniform. He carried a pistol holstered on his hip and wore a floppy-brimmed green jungle hat of the sort seen in old film clips of the Burma campaign. He strode crisply up to Sôbô and saluted.

“This is Grande,” Sôbô told Culdee. “Crackerjack jungle fighter. Ex-Philippine Army Scout Ranger. Great record in the war. Killed more of my countrymen than the A-bomb. I don’t for a moment doubt it. I’ve had him training these tribesmen for a little flanking attack I have in mind. Now, if you don’t mind, I have details to work out with Sergeant Grande.”

One of the Negrito guides brought Culdee a steaming calabash full of dark liquid. He sniffed it warily. Just coffee—and good coffee at that. The other brought him a platter of fried sliced bananas. When he had finished the meal, the two men invited him into the longhouse. It was dark and smoky in there, but the jungle light filtered through the plaited roof, and gradually Culdee could make out details. The most striking of these were the shrunken heads that adorned the roof posts—dozens of them, it seemed. And they were not the heads of other Negritos. Some had red hair, some close-cropped stiff black hair, others the black, curly tresses and long noses of Tausuqs. One was blond. Culdee stared at them long and hard. One of the Negritos nudged his partner and pointed to Culdee, laughing.

“ Sí, hombre ,” he said when Culdee looked over at him. “ Como tú . White Joe Milikan, hey?” The Negritos fell down laughing, tears streaming from their eyes. Culdee went out, trying to laugh along with them. Waiting on the longhouse steps, he noticed that many of the Negrito men carried rifles as well as spears. From old newsreels and books on the war he recognized the weapons as the standard broom-stocked Japanese 7.7-millimeter Type 99 infantry rifles. But these didn’t look as though they dated back forty-some years to a war in a tropical jungle. They looked fresh out of the box, gleaming with oil, scarcely a speck of rust of them. And though the rifles were nearly as tall as most of the Negritos, the men handled them familiarly, almost as naturally as they did their spears.

Then Sôbô was ready to leave. He returned Sergeant Grande’s salute, exchanged good-byes with the Negrito elders, and they headed back down the trail.

“Fascinating place, what?” he said to Culdee.

“Those heads are a bit spooky,” Culdee replied. “Christ, they had white men in there.”

“And plenty of Japanese, too,” Sôhô added. “Don’t forget that, old sport. These, by the way, are the fellows described in the guidebooks as kin of the ‘gentle Tasaday.’ If that’s gentle, you have to wonder what the grumpy ones are like.”

Kasim’s maneuvers at the wheel of the Thunder sent Miranda sprawling onto the cockpit deck. By the time she found her feet and groped her way to the handgrips up forward, she saw they were not heading back the way they’d come, but south, toward San Lázaro harbor.

“Where we going?” she yelled to Kasim.

“You sailboat,” he yelled back. He pointed ahead. She saw Seamark dead ahead, lying at anchor in the roadstead. “Capitán Katana, he say so. Ordenes, no? ”

The sailboat grew larger as they approached. Miranda held on tight. The Thunder was flying, straight toward the ketch—no, a yawl, she thought inanely. That fucker Curt. . . . She saw Brillo suddenly stand up on the cabin roof, his ruff bristling. He was staring right into her eyes. They would hit the Seamark exactly amidships . . .

“Brillo!” she yelled.

Kasim cut the wheel hard left, and they whipped alongside her, not ten feet from collision. Brillo saw her and barked, once.

Then they were heading seaward, toward the reef. Behind, she saw two Thunders chasing them. Seeing their change of course, the Thunders had angled to cut them off at the reef. Combers broke over the coral. Kasim headed straight for them.