Robert Jones - Blood Tide

“That’s rotten-looking smoke,” Culdee said. “For a brand-new engine.”

“More of the disguise,” Sôbô replied. “That’s false smoke, from a generator at the base of the stack. The real exhaust is voided at the waterline, aft. You can barely see it.” He pointed to the chugging bubbles and pale wisps of steam. “And it won’t attract Redeye missiles, either.”

Miranda couldn’t look at the tramp any longer. She turned her back and stalked off the mole. But the more Culdee looked, the better he liked Sôbô’s notion. Damned clever tactic. That old stinkpot would draw fast boats, fat, dumb, and happy, like dead meat draws flies. Maybe even the gunboat, if Millikan was sucker enough.

“What about firepower?” Culdee asked. “I sure don’t see any yet.”

“Watch.” Sôbô called more orders to the Japanese workers. Four of them stripped the tattered black tarp off the deck cargo. Culdee laughed. Under the tarp was a long, gray-barreled naval rifle, bolted securely to the deck, with ammunition ready boxes close at hand.

“What is she, a five-inch?” he asked.

“Japanese 4.7-inch rifle,” Sôbô said. “Standard on the imperial navy’s earlier I-class submarines and the pre-Fubuki-class destroyers. Damned fine weapon. And this one’s weight, complete with the mount and all necessary ammunition, just balances the weight of the new diesel. There’ll be heavy machine guns on her as well—those 13.2 and 7.7 millimeters. She rides a bit lower in the water, but that’s all right. She’s faster than she was before, and she outguns Millikan’s gunboat now.” Culdee laughed again with delight.

Then Miranda walked back toward them, her heels thumping hard on the coral.

“Look,” she said to Sôbô, “I don’t like any of this, and I want out of here. This is all a mistake. A lot of men have died already, horribly, and you’re planning to kill more. You’ve totally maimed a boat I worked long and hard to make seaworthy, a boat I love almost as much as I love Seamark . You say you’re doing all this to get my boat back for me. Well, I don’t want it back at that price. You’re just using me as cover, too, in a way, so that you can knock over this man Millikan’s piddling little dope empire and probably take it over yourself. I don’t even know what’s happening to Freddie, and he’s the best damned mate I ever had.” She looked at Culdee. “Yeah, and that includes you, too, Dad. You love all this war crap, I can tell just by looking at you now. Well, stay and die with these other saps, then. I dragged you up out of that lousy boozy gutter you’d found for yourself, wallowing there in self-pity and rum, uglier than this poor tramp here, and I made you back into a sailor. Now you want to be a naval hero and a killer as well. So, stay here and kill, or be killed, for all I care. I’m cutting out.”

“I’ve got to stay here now,” Culdee said quietly. “I’ve got to kill Turner. Or Millikan—whatever his real name is. He killed my shipmates in North Vietnam.”

“Look,” Sôbô said, “you don’t have to fight, Captain. I’d hoped to send you with young Kasim here”—he slapped the white-haired Moro’s thick shoulder—“to cut your boat out of that harbor tonight, under cover of our attacks. But he can do it alone, with a few of his men. Your boat will be back here sometime after dark. We can replenish her speedily—I have stores already marked and set aside—and have you on your way safely by midnight. With Samal crewmen to carry you as far as you wish. As for Venganza , as soon as we’ve defeated Millikan, my men will restore her to her original condition. Better than her original condition, in fact. The new diesel is my gift to you for your help so far. A new paint job will go with it, new rigging and new sails as well. I’ll send it after you, later, to do with as you see fit.” He stopped, standing erect and solemn in the land breeze.

“To hell with both of you,” Miranda said at last. She turned on her heel and stalked stiff-backed toward the bunker. Kasim followed, grinning with amazement. The two men watched her go. Then Culdee turned back to the Q-boat. He was reading the registry on her stern.

“ Bloedig-Feeks ,” Culdee read off the stern, “What’s that mean?”

“It’s Dutch,” Sôbô said. “Means ‘Red Witch.’ Did you ever read the book? The movie was terrible but the novel, by your excellent Mr. Garland Roark, was a crackerjack sea story. Almost Conradian, I’d say.”

“Bloody Fix,” Culdee said, shaking his head as he watched Miranda go through the bunker hatch. “We’re sure as hell in one with my daughter.”

Curt and the two Thunders arrived back at San Lázaro shortly after sunrise. The pilot of the second boat had finally found an unpolluted gas drum, and while they ran east on that one, the crews strained enough from the bad barrels to allow them an uninterrupted passage, but much slower than it should have been. As it was, both boats’ tanks were beginning to suck air as they eased into the Lázaro basin. Where was everybody? While Abdul refueled, Curt went up to the commo’s house to find out.

“He’s on Balbal,” Billy Torres said. “There’s been a world of shit happened since you left. We might have a revolution on our hands here. The commode’s holed up in his fort at Balbal with most of the boats. We’re only leaving a few here to cover our ass. I’m heading over that way right now. You’d better come along.”

“I’ve got to collect my dog from the yawl,” Curt said. “I don’t want these Tausuqs making aso out of him.”

“Too bad,” Torres said. Aso was a Filipino delicacy—dog-meat stew. “I’d take seconds and thirds if they did.”

“You don’t like my dog,” Curt said.

“Damned right I don’t. And you can take him in your own boat when you’ve got him. He’s sure as shit not coming in mine.”

Curt bummed a jeep ride back down to the basin. Abdul had finished fueling his Thunder, and the two of them ran out to the Sea Witch . Brillo looked gaunt, standing there on the cabin roof. Had Rosalinda forgotten to come out and feed him last night? His bowl was empty, so Curt fed him a big double portion, loaded his loose gear, and led the dog, leashed, down to the Thunder. They saw Billy in another Thunder racing out of the channel toward Balbal and accelerated into his creaming wake. Revolution? What the fuck’s all that about, Curt wondered.

He found the commodore inshore on Balbal, in a huge fake-thatched boat shed behind the headquarters. The shed connected to the channel leading in from the sea. Curt had seen the shed but never gone into it before. His eyes adjusted slowly to the green gloom, and then he saw Millikan on the forward deck of a long old-timey-looking ship moored to bollards at the dock. The ship bristled with machine guns and cannon.

“What the hell is she?” he asked when he’d come aboard.

“River gunboat,” the commo said. “About sixty years old. Slow and rickety but loaded for bear. She’s called the Moro Armado . The first Commodore Millikan arrived here on her early in the war. She’d pulled him out of the water after his PT boat was sunk. Apparently a survivor from Corregidor, she was. There were three gunboats still afloat there just before the island fell, in early ’42, and all were reported to have been scuttled, but this one must have sneaked away. No one knows for sure. By the time the Tausuqs found her, the Japs had nailed her from the air. Only man left alive was Millikan, and he couldn’t even recall being rescued. Her real name and numbers had been blown or burned off by the Jap dive-bombers, and apparently the crew had deep-sixed all her papers and records. Once Mill One came around, he renamed her after one of these islands down here, Moro Armado . She’s kind of a talisman to the Tausuqs, magical because she brought them their great guerrilla leader, the commodore.” He laughed wryly. “ Moro Armado means the ‘Armed Moor.’ But Billy and the more cynical members of our little navy call her Albino Armadillo because of her white hull and her god-awful waddle. She only comes out, usually, for Commodore’s Day—that’s Easter Monday. The day Millikan finally emerged from his coma and the guerrilla war really got under way. A showboat, but we may damn well have to fight her.”