Robert Jones - Blood Tide

“You hold fast!” he yelled. “We jump!”

It was solid coral dead ahead, covered for a moment by the spilling waves, then bare and sharp-fanged again. They’d tear the Thunder’s guts out . . .

Kasim’s luck ran with them. He hit the reef just as a comber crashed over it. The Thunder leapt up, airborne and straight as an arrow shot from a crossbow, and they hit the sea smoothly on the far side. “ Allah akhbar! ” Kasim yelled. “God good fella!” Looking back, Miranda saw the first of the pursuing fast boats hesitate a moment, then smash the reef at some sixty miles an hour. Bad timing. Bodies flew through the air, along with chunks of the Thunder. Its gas tanks exploded in a great orange and black burst. The other chaser circled, then ran parallel to them inside the reef. But Kasim angled outward from it, rapidly widening the distance between them. The old man’s eyes were sparking with joy. He turned and looked at Miranda and laughed aloud. “You take wheel awhile, hey? Good fight, hey? I clean up a bit.”

Only then did she notice the dead Tausuq crumpled in the cockpit corner. Blood had pooled deep where he lay. Kasim lifted him by the shirt collar. The man’s head flopped onto his chest. His neck had been nearly severed by the bolo stroke. Kasim shook his own head sadly.

“I grow old,” he yelled to her over the engine roar. “My arm too—how you say— débil? Flojo? Weak,’ hey?” In his younger days he’d have beheaded the man with one blow.

He heaved the body over the side and turned to with swab and bucket. The mess must be cleaned up—Capitán Katana was very strict about such matters.

Miranda hardly noticed what was happening. As the horror of the chase receded, the greater horror of the whole situation came into sickening focus. What kind of hell had she gotten them into? Five men dead yesterday in the Dangerous Ground—cut down by bolo and gunfire in a matter of moments. No hesitations. Now this morning, at least three more. Maybe four? What about Effredio? Her friend of so many years, the best mate she’d ever had. Even if he were still alive, what would they be doing to him?

TWENTY-FIVE

Okay, the commodore thought. Once is happenstance—the photographs in Hughes’s boat. Twice is coincidence—the exploding Bible. Three times is enemy action—the incident off the boat basin. He’d lost two Thunders that morning. The one stolen by the people in the pump boat and the one that blew up on the reef. The crew of the second chase boat had brought back the boloed corpse of the Tausuq helmsman in the stolen boat. What was his name—Mustafa? If those pump-boat folks were just simple islanders, they were mighty damned tough.

He made his decision. The boat basin was the weakest link in his operation—no defenses to speak of, wide open to the sea. He’d withdraw the larger portion of his Thunders to the Balbal base, concentrate them there, take all his files and stores along with them. Leave four or five Thunders here with just fuel and ammunition enough to present a threat to the flank of any attackers who showed up off Balbal. But the main fight, if it came to that, would be in the waters off Balbal. That’s where his strength lay.

There were still many things the commodore didn’t understand about the situation. (Like all of the details, he thought wryly.) The MATS guy’s head, for instance. Hughes’s role in the equation, if any. The Bible-thumping man and woman from the gospel, though of course that was certainly just cover. Damn clever, though. Ironic. It indicated more subtlety behind the scenes than Culdee could possibly muster. Chi Coms? NPA? MNLF? Perhaps even some rival intelligence agency. The other side’s or our own? Too early in the game to waste time figuring it out, though. The best bet, the commodore was sure, was to concentrate his forces immediately at Balbal, scour the islands, locate the enemy, then wipe him out.

He wondered how Billy was faring. Billy had the prisoner from the pump boat down in the little casita that served as the commodore’s brig, interrogating the man. The commodore hated that end of intelligence work. Still, he’d better go down and have a look, make sure Billy hadn’t killed the man out of sheer Filipino vengefulness without getting anything from him. God, he hated it! Maybe he’d better check first to see how the evacuation was faring . . .

“That’s it,” Billy Torres said. “You’re for the cross, my boy.” Effredio was already hanging, arms extended sideways, dripping with blood, but from manacles on the wall of the brig, not from a wooden cross. He watched Torres through eyes blurred with pain. Every bone, every muscle in his body ached, his arms worst of all.

“But the cross is for Christians,” he croaked weakly. “I am, as I’ve told you again and again, a Muslim. My very name is a Muslim name. Kasim bin Musa, no self-respecting unbeliever would take such a name.” They were speaking Samal. Effredio’s fluency in the tongue was far greater than Torres’s, and Billy was bothered by that. But not much. Most men in the southern Philippines spoke several languages, especially sailors, traders, and military men. And of course revolutionaries.

“So you insist,” Torres said. He poked the joint of Effredio’s shoulder with a Shore Patrol nightstick. The man on the wall grunted. That was one of the fine points about torture—once you’d softened your man up, tenderized him so to speak, you didn’t have to hit him hard to make it hurt. By reducing the actual amount of force employed, you prolonged his life and thus his value. The longer he hung there, the greater the pain. To him, it seemed it would never end. Torres had seen men actually will themselves dead on the wall, but they always needed maximum agony to take them over the edge. This he would not provide. It was a hallmark of Billy’s style, the signature of a master.

“But for a Moro, you look very much like a Visayan to me.” Billy tapped an elbow. Effredio grunted. “Leyte, Cebu, Negros, Iloilo, Siquijor even. You look more like Samar than Samal.” He laughed at his own word play—one was an island, the other a tribe—then tapped Effredio on the ribs. Effredio grunted.

“I told you,” he said. “My father was Samal, my mother from Negros. I’m just a boatman. We were diving shell over on Palawan—good shell waters there, off Taytay. Also stealing birds’ nests at El Nido, those cliffs of black marble where the swallows build their homes. Chinese in Manila must have their nido soup, their bird’s nest soup. Good money there. But mundo robbed us near—” He coughed on a trickle of blood, and the very flexing of his ribs almost made him pass out.

“Yes, yes,” Billy said impatiently. “Near Balabac Strait, on your way to Sabah, where you hoped to recoup your losses by smuggling cigarettes back up to Basilan. Your engine was making trouble, so you stopped here in hopes of repairing it. Then, cruising along the reef, you decided to see if you could dive up any worthwhile shells. You soon discovered the reef was dead, et cetera. I must say, you’re consistent. But so am I. Persistent as well. So we’ll give it one more try, then it’s the cross.”

“But I am a Muslim. The cross is for Christians—”

Torres rattled the nightstick against Effredio’s rib cage. Hard.

“Listen to me,” he barked. “This has all been preliminaries, a warm-up so to speak. Stretching exercises to limber you up for the workout. Now that you’re strong, stretched, and centered, we’ll begin.”

“ Curt! ” Effredio yelled, his eyes wide with pain and fear. “That’s the name you want. Take it! Curt is his name, a Milikan named Curt! I know nothing more, but he is the man behind us, the man who pays us.” His head slumped down on his chest, and he moaned a long, gurgling moan.