Robert Jones - Blood Tide

“Lean your chin on the gunwale,” she said.

“Miranda, don’t. Please don’t.”

She laughed, and he heard something click. He passed out.

Miranda tied his hands behind his back with a length of small stuff, then his ankles, then cinched both ties together so he couldn’t move. She went aft and unlashed the wheel. She steered for Venganza , only half a mile ahead.

“What the hell happened to you?”

“It was just like the movies, Billy.” The commodore laughed happily. His khakis were ripped, splashed with blood, and a deep slash on his chin showed a glint of jawbone. Blood dripped from it down his chest. Dirty red knuckles were scraped ragged. But his eyes sparked bright as a little kid’s.

“Like those old Saturday-afternoon Westerns with the cattle stampeding and the cowboys caught in front of them. Those Negritos ran a whole herd of tamarau down on us, just when we’d started to hurt the guys at the gate. I killed three or four buffalo, Billy—pop, pop, pop, right through the eyes. Pretty shots, Billy, pretty shots. Then the gun was empty. They hit us. I dived into the lee of a bull I’d dropped, right at my feet, Billy. I tucked in tight against his back, and the ones behind came crashing over him. One of ’em kicked me, here, on the button. . . . Get a corpsman over here, Billy. Sock some stitches in this thing. . . . Then the tamarau swung toward the gate with the Gritos behind them. I cleared out with what men were left.” He stopped, took a bottle of Scotch from the table in the boat-shed bunker where they stood, and swallowed a slug. He poured Scotch from the neck of the bottle over the slash, winced, cursed, then drank some more. He sat down.

“You stopped the charge, I take it.”

“Just barely,” Torres said. “I’d rigged claymores either side of the entrance. Machine guns through the firing slots. Must be ten, twenty dead buffalo out there, and quite a few Negritos.”

“Pity to lose the buffalo meat,” the commo said. “Good heads out there, too—those ones I shot. That’s war, though. So what’s the overall situation?”

“Bad,” Billy said. “We’ve held the Negritos for now—I blocked the gate with that old backhoe we use to dredge the boat channel, but there’s heavy fire coming in from all sides now.”

The commo could hear it.

“There’s Moros in close on our left and right flanks, the Negritos behind us. Dozens of pump boats and kumpits out to seaward, laying it on us nonstop.”

“Anything heavy?”

“Just machine guns—.30 calibers, nothing more.”

“What about that old tub that came in with the pump boats?”

“Just that—a beat-up island trader they must have captured on their way here. There’s a slew of Moros on her, using her as a fort. But they’re only firing light stuff.” Billy paused. “You know, the more I think of it, the more this looks like a big pirate raid. Nothing political—not MNLF. They’d have mortars at least. And RPGs. These guys are just mundos from east of here, Jolo or Tawitawi. They probably heard there was good pickings over this way and took a shot at grabbing it away from us.”

“What about those Negritos, though?” the commo said. “They’re damned well organized—good weapons, and they know how to use them. You ever hear of Negritos cooperating with Moros? And these Gritos are certainly local, from right here on Balbal. I’ve seen sign of them plenty, out hunting in that backcountry.”

“I don’t know,” Billy said. He hadn’t thought of that. “What do you think?”

“I think this isn’t the time to puzzle over stuff like this. We can’t hold here. I hate sieges, anyway. We’ve got to sortie—Thunders and Moro Armado . Get some sea room where we can maneuver and put our speed and firepower to work.”

What I told you a long time ago, Billy thought. But aloud all he said was, “Good. I’ve got the engines turning over in the gunboat and swimmers out in the channel clearing those mines. We can send unmanned pump boats through ahead of the Thunders to blow whatever mines they miss.” He checked his watch: 1329. “We can be ready to roll in twenty minutes.”

“Where’s that corpsman with the surgi—”

Heavy explosions boomed from the wall outside the boat shed. Gunfire rose to a crescendo. They ran for the gunboat.

Sergeant Grande lay stiffly behind a downed tree trunk, one leg crooked and swollen, leaking blood through the field dressing that covered a cannister wound. The claymores had scythed through his attack like the strokes of a bolo. He’d hoped to carry the gate behind the tamarau and not have to rely on the war-era shaped charges or the vague time sense of the Negritos lighting their fuses. He watched the wall a hundred yards ahead of him closely. Any second now, he thought. . . . Then they went off—four ragged blasts—and through the red dust cloud of the shattered adobe the holes from the blasts came clear, the wall itself teetered above the holes, crumbling, falling with a great clattering roar. As it died away, he blew his police whistle. But the Negritos hadn’t waited—they were into the wall through the reeking smoke fumes, spears and bolos flashing, into the sudden rising burst of uncoordinated gunfire, stick grenades spinning ahead of them. And a contingent of Moros from the flanks was pouring in after the Negritos. Listening to the screams and explosions, Sergeant Grande opened his canteen and swallowed a mouthful of warm water. Cannister shot left big holes in a man. Big as ball bearings. He felt water dribbling through the second hole, the one in his stomach. It was cool on the hot edges of the wound.

“Here they come,” Sôbô said. He had the glasses to his eyes, watching the plume of steam from the Moro Armado’s stack creep slowly seaward through the treetops lining the channel. A half-dozen pump boats, unmanned and engines at top revs, had raced out first. Four of them hit mines and blew to splinters. After them came the green-hulled Thunders, hydroplaning already so that they would run as shallowly as possible through the mined outer channel. Their guns blazed ahead of them. Two Thunders hit mines and slewed onto the reef, burning, then exploding. That left six. They flared to engage the Moro pump boats. Tracers streaked both ways, rooster tails rose and fell, leaving wakes in crazy crosshatched patterns on the sea. The bow of the Moro Armado emerged, then her long white hull. Her pilot house, Sôbô could see, was protected by armored side plates. She bristled with machine-gun barrels, and the long muzzles of the three-inchers on her bow and stern cranked around to engage the slow-moving Moro kumpits . Flame spewed from the forward gun mount, and a kumpit suddenly lost its bow in the black burst of a hit. Another shell took it amidships, sending a geyser of water and shattered planks up and astern. The kumpit capsized and broke in half. The cannon banged again . . .

“Christ,” Culdee said, his voice choking. “Here comes Miranda.”

Sôbô saw the yawl close alongside, the stolen Thunder behind it. Kasim leapt up on Venganza’s deck, tied off the Thunder, and ran forward to help the sailboat. He reached down and came up with a limp, hog-tied bundle—a white man with a sick grin on his face and glazed eyes. Miranda followed.

“You must get clear of here,” Sôbô said to her. “We’re about to engage the enemy.”

“This is the guy that stole my boat,” Miranda said, not moving. She kicked the man on the deck. “This is Curt. He’s been working with Millikan. He says Millikan’s dead. Maybe you’ve won already. Maybe you can get them to quit.”

Sôbô swung his glasses onto the gunboat’s pilothouse. He saw a blond-haired white man in ripped khakis on the wing of the bridge. A short, dark, wide-shouldered man, also in khakis, stood beside him, directing fire from the gun mounts toward the remaining kumpits .