Robert Jones - Blood Tide

“We will destroy him,” Sôbô repeated slowly. He pulled something from a sheath on the table before him. A katana—a samurai sword. It flashed in the stark light of the mess hall. “ Banzai! ”

The Japanese echoed the cry. Culdee stood and joined them. “ Banzai! ” His fist was clenched, broken and dark, weathered by-battles and sun and saltwater. He thrust it upward again and again.

“ Banzai! Banzai! Banzai! May we live ten thousand years! Banzai! ”

Now the Moros joined the chant, their bolos flashing bright as Sôbô’s sword.

“ Banzai! ” Kasim screamed. “ Katana! ” He laughed and wept at once.

Then Miranda was rising, standing beside Culdee. Her square fist punched upward, slowly at first, then faster—a piston pounding toward heaven with the others. Her face was still streaked with the wet snail tracks of tears, her eyes green and flecked with motus . . .

Sea fire.

“ Banzai! ” she screamed. “Ten thousand years! Kill them! Kill them all! Burn in hell ten thousand years!”

Rosalinda was weeping. Outside even the dogs howled, the dogs of the barren shore.

Padre Cotinho, looking on quietly, held back a smile. Effredio had not died in vain.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Torres had left four Thunders at San Lázaro, all fully fueled and armed, their mooring lines singled up and their engines warm. The senior mundo , a middle-aged man named Siddi Ibrahim, kept his crew close to the boats. His father had served the original commodore, and Ibrahim took pride in that. He did not like the kumpit traffic that kept pouring past the mouth of the channel leading into the fast-boat basin. Too many boats for this time of day. He kept glassing them with the worn binoculars Torres had left for him, but they all seemed normal enough—a few crewmen lounging in the shade of the after awnings, the helmsmen, bored, smoking cigarettes or drinking from mugs. Double-dragon coffee, Ibrahim thought. A cup would taste good right now. It was nearly noon, and his men were making bets on which would sing first today, the minaret or the cathedral. They laughed and flashed rolls of pesos, staring eagerly back up toward the town. The imam of the Lázaro City mosque was in unspoken competition with Padre Fagundes to see which could proclaim high noon the quicker, the muezzin’s hoarse yell from the minaret, or the great bronze bell of the cathedral.

Today the muezzin won. His deep, musical bellow had just begun “ Allah . . .” when the vibrant peal of the bell tolled high above the town. The men were beginning to crow or protest the decision when a new sound joined the chorus. Ibrahim ducked flat on the dock. Bap-bap-bap-bap-bap . . . it came. A machine gun. He heard the rounds snap past, caught the flash of a tracer, brighter than the noon sun, and heard the smack of bullets hitting wood. Habib Amin, the happiest of the gamblers a moment ago, stood still, a wad of pesos flapping in his hand. A bullet knocked him flat. His head exploded . . .

Ibrahim saw tracers pouring from two kumpits lying dead in the water at the mouth of the channel. Bullet splashes stitched the water, walked up to the dock, tore into one Thunder, paused a moment, walked on. Ibraham smelled leaking gasoline.

“Go!” he yelled. “Into the boats! Attack!”

The crewmen scrambled toward their boats, crouching low and weaving as they ran. Another man fell, knocked sideways clean over a Thunder and into the water. Ibrahim dived into his cockpit and reached up to start the engine. Hassan, his crewman, tumbled in and lay flat in the scuppers. “The gun!” Ibrahim screamed. “Shoot back! Make them drop their heads!” The engine roared and Ibrahim flipped the mooring lines loose, bullets whipping close overhead. Another Thunder was roaring, and another. Two leapt out ahead of him into the channel, and Ibrahim followed directly behind them—their bulk would mask him from the gunfire. Then his engine faltered. The reek of gasoline—sharp—danger. . . . He heard another boat roar up behind him and slipped his Thunder sideways to let it through. The first two Thunders were nearly at the mouth of the channel, veering out away from each other to exit at diverging angles. Good! Divide their fire! The third boat raced up behind them.

Then the Thunder to the right disappeared in a red and black burst. Burning gasoline spewed out over the water. The second boat dodged sideways, but then it, too, suddenly vanished in a great boiling weal of torn water. Debris and water splashed down. . . . Ibrahim cranked his engine, it coughed, then ignited, then stuttered again. He choked it, hard, slammed the throttle forward, and it roared clean again.

The third boat—fifty yards ahead now and opening fast—shot into the gap left by the two destroyed Thunders. Other kumpits had closed in behind those at the mouth of the channel. Ibrahim saw muzzle flash wink from their bows. The third Thunder—who was that? Hakim? Yes —began shredding fiberglass. It blew back in chunks, green and whizzing, and Ibrahim saw bullets rip the boat fore and aft, Hakim suddenly gone from behind the wheel, the windscreen starred and breaking up. Then there was a flick and a flash and a ballooning gout of blazing gasoline as the Thunder exploded.

Ibrahim steered for the flames, cut the wheel hard to the left, feeling the heat singe his eyebrows, stiffen his face, and he was through it—in the pall of the smoke, and racing seaward. Hassan had swung the M60 aft and was firing back at the kumpits . A good man, Ibrahim thought. He looked ahead and saw another Thunder racing up at an angle to join him. Who was it? Had one of his own boats actually gotten clear of the trap? Or maybe a boat sent by Torres or the Commodore . . .

Blood was blurring his eyes, washing down with the wind from a nick in his brow, and he wiped them clear, trying to see who was in the other Thunder. His eyes flickered clear. He saw the pilot—a white-haired Moro in a sun-bleached blue turban, his beard blowing back in the wind as he grinned at Ibrahim. There was another figure in the Thunder, behind the machine gun, long dark hair blowing wild, wide green eyes over the gun barrel, through the sights, close now, not twenty yards, fifteen, ten . . . it was a woman at the gun! A young woman with a face like a hawk . . .

The Lewis gun opened up at point-blank range. Its bullets smashed the Thunder’s pilot into bloody rags, then leapt to the gunner and riddled him. The last burst hit the engine, and the Thunder blew up . . .

“ Muy bueno! ” Kasim shouted over the wind. “ Allah akhbar! ”

High above town the cathedral bell sounded the last stroke of noon.

Shortly before noon Balabatchi’s jeep returned with the five guards he had summoned. Balabatchi awaited them in his sail loft. They looked puzzled as they entered the room, more puzzled when two wide-faced, pale-skinned, pockmarked men with crew cuts and the odd, flat black eyes of Hapon shut and bolted the door behind them.

“We are overthrowing the commodore,” Balabatchi told them simply. “He is an enemy of our religion, our islands, and thus our people. Are you with us?”

“Who are these men?” a guard named Mufaddhi asked. He looked at the Japanese.

“Allies,” Balabatchi said. “What is your answer?”

The guards remained stupefied.

“Make up your minds,” Balabatchi said. “We must begin now. Friends or enemies, you?”

Three of the five, the youngest, quickly said, “Friends!”

Mufaddhi and another man, Haji Hassam, one of the most respected of the guards, were still silent.