Assignment - Sulu Sea (17 page)

He was sure now that the jeep tracks had been made by a disinterment
party, and Pete Holcomb‘s remains were removed forever from the sight of men.
But you don’t shed tears over the dead, he thought grimly, since the losers
were usually the careless or the weak. Sometimes a man was lost by treachery,
or because the enemy was smarter and more professional. Even so, you did not
stop to mourn the fallen, and he did not mourn for Peter Holcomb. But he meant
to learn why and how he died.

The girl‘s shadow fell from behind him upon the empty grave.
The monkeys in the jungle screeched in derision. From far down the white beach
came the sound of a laboring engine.

“Sam, someone is coming.”

He had only the entrenching tool as a weapon. The
Tarakuta
was still lingering in the
channel, mirror signal flashing. Willi’s mouth tightened when he urged
her toward the water.

“I won’t go back to the schooner without you."

“I’m not going back just yet,” Durell said. “Has the Tarakuta
ever been allowed in Ch‘ing’s tin port?”

“No, but—”

"The only way in is by crossing the island?”

“Or going along the shore. But—”

“Then we’ll decide which route to take later. Let old Joseph
sail off. He won’t go far,” Durell said. “It will make them think he’s just
passing by.”

The girl looked askance at their tracks on the sand. “But they’ll
see our trail, Sam.”

“Can’t be helped. If you won’t swim back, come along with me.
There’s no other place to go.”

He took her hand and they ran for the wall of brilliant, oppressive
green that fought for possession of the beach. The whining of the jeep grew
louder, woven through the surf’s thunder and the endless screeches of birds and
monkeys. It was like diving into another kind of sea as they plunged past the
line of coco palms into this World of clinging, rank growth. If he thought the
beach had been hot, he found here a breathless, steamy weight that was like a
viscous curtain impossible to shred and throw off. Their pace slowed at once.
The girl ran beside him, carrying their flippers, masks and tanks. They
were useless burdens, however. He could been here before. And I’m better off
with you than hiding in the swamps.”

A rifle shot ended the conversation of the birds overhead.
The monkeys screamed and turned into small brown streaks heading inland along
the branched avenues above. Fine pollen dust, a stray orchid, and butterflies
made a tangle of disorienting, blinding color. The shot came again. The girl
moved nearer and her warm, naked thigh pressed against his.

“They’re shooting at shadows,” he said. “But they know we’re
here.”

She nodded. “They can find us, too. Some of the Hakka
mine workers are good trackers. They’re nothing more than indentured servants,
and some of them run off and have to be caught again.”

“Shades of the Old South,” Durell murmured.

“It isn’t funny.”

“It never was. Do you know your way around here?”

Her eyes were angry. “Did you get me ashore just to use me
as a guide? If I’d known you meant to stay—”

“We’re here, and We might as Well try to survive,” he suggested.
“I didn’t think the patrol would come along as soon as it did, but in any case,
We’re stuck. I’d prefer not to have to worry about you, Willi, but since you
passed up the chance to swim back to the schooner, let’s try to get along,
shall we?”

She drew a. deep breath. “All right. I’m not much of a guide,
though. Old Joseph knows Bangka best. He was a coast watcher here during World
War II, against the Japanese. He spoke pidgin to the sons of the samurai, and
they simply thought he was a misplaced Polynesian ignoramus. But they caught
Mother and Dad." She shivered suddenly. “Father was beheaded, on the
beach. Mother died that night, in their camp. But they didn’t connect old
Joseph, and let him stay on. He helped the U.S. Marines when they landed here from
the Celebes. Before that, Joseph helped downed flyers to hide in the rain
forest. To get to Ch’ing’s port, as I said, you either have to go by the beach
perimeter, or across the mountain and through the rain jungle. Both are equally
dangerous.” She spoke with sudden violence. “Don’t be sympathetic, please! I
couldn’t bear it. The Japanese are gone and the coast watchers are forgotten.
Today the Chinese are here, and most of them are decent people, but they send
their dead back to China for burial in enormous mahogany coffins, and they
still buy their wives from among young Chinese not have concealed in time the
disturbance he’d made hunting for Holcomb’s grave. The people in the jeep would
know at a glance that someone was ashore, not yesterday or the day before, but
right now. He smelled danger, and did not like it. Neither did he like the
responsibility he now had for Willi Panapura‘s safety. It was not as if she
were in his business and knew the risks and chances to be taken. She was an
innocent bystander in this, and he could not help but feel that her safety must
he considered above his own.

They ran for several minutes, then he checked her and they
sank to their knees behind a vine of thick, spotted leaves, with a rank
windfall of blown sago palms beyond them. Water trickled slowly somewhere. The
light was bilious, filtering from an enormous, violently yellow sun beyond
the tall, towering vegetation. The heat clamped iron hands on his throat and he
breathed quickly and lightly, as if strangled. Sweat made his torso slick. The
girl’s body glistened and wavered as she shifted her weight on her near-naked haunches.

“Listen,” he said.

The jeep had stopped. They could not see it, but voices chattered
as high and unintelligibly as the invisible monkeys, excited and disputatious.
Then a deeper voice spoke out sharply and there was silence.

“That’s Cantonese, so they’re Hakka people—Prince Ch’ing’s
men. He patrols the beaches regularly,” Willi said.

“Has he ever explained such passion for privacy?”

“Well, he owns most of Bangka—this beach and the tin mines
and the port over the mountains.”

“I wish I could fly with you in the
amphib
over this precious piece of real estate,” Durell
said.

“I did that yesterday, when I left you at Pandakan.”

Willi’s long, golden hair had come loose again, and swung like
cables of honey. She found a pin in it and piled it up once more to keep her
neck cool. The gesture was pure and beautiful, an utterly feminine maneuver.
"I saw nothing unusual. I went up and down the beaches and around the
whole island perimeter. I certainly didn’t spot a Polaris sub. There’s only the
old tramp freighter loading tin ore at Prince Ch’ing‘s private little port.”

“I’d like to have a look at it. But I’d like to find a
safe place to put you, Willi, while I do so.”

She sniffed. “I don‘t see how the sub can be here, and if you'd
hinted to Joseph you meant to stay ashore, he'd never have agreed. But you
don’t have to worry about me. I’ve girls back in the home village. Except for
the Hakka laborers, most of them are small merchants in tin shacks among the Malays,
and they’re friendly and dependable, mostly, except here on Bangka. If you want
to know if I can navigate here, yes, I can. I’ve seen old Joseph’s maps made
when he was a coast watcher, since I was knee-high to a crocodile. Parts of this
island are deadly, but we can get to this port that interests you so much. But
I just don‘t like going around undressed like this.”

“Let’s worry about our skins literally, Willi. Joseph won’t abandon
us. The schooner will never be far off.”

“I suppose you counted on that, too, when you decided to stay
ashore!” She bit her lip. “The poor old man will be wild with worry. And
Malachy—oh, everything is such a mess!”

He was concerned about her nerves, but his own worry was
like a toothache as they trotted away from the beach. He had no weapon, but he
could fashion one, when needed. And he guessed the need would come sooner than
anticipated.

They left their useless tanks and flippers hidden in
the undergrowth and went barefoot across the rough husks of fallen coconut
fibers. He thought of snakes, of scorpions, of all manner of stinging,
venomous things. But the tall golden girl led the way with quick assurance,
along a path he could not see. From behind them came thrashing noises of clumsy
pursuit. A rifle cracked again, and he wondered if one of the little
monkeys was the victim. He could see nothing beyond a few feet of the wall of
green vegetation that, humid and dripping, closed around them.

The wildness was deceptive, however. The island was not as
pagan or wild as it seemed. They came upon a rutted wagon road before they put
another hundred yards between them and the distantly muttering surf, turned,
and followed it. The primitive plant life of the beach yielded to savannah grass
for a short time; the palms, pandanus and mangroves disappeared. Then there was
forest again, but with a rich insanity of orchids, insects, and mutated shrubs
that defied the imagination. The trees were huge, draped with vines, brilliantly
flowered. The road cut through a coconut plantation, heavy with silent
heat, and then came to an open field and a paddy irrigated from a system
of neat trenches. Beyond the field was a mat hut built on crazily leaning
stilts above the soft, uncertain matting of rotted vegetation on the ground. The
thatched roof was shaded by tall teak trees wreathed in tough
wakurikuri
vines. Wild banana trees stood in a
thick grove on a slope of land beyond the rice paddy, and the fallen fruit,
many inches deep on the soil, gave off a rich, aromatic pungency. The only
sound was a single, sudden, sharp shriek of a parakeet.

It was the first open glimpse of the island Durell had
seen since his view of Bangka from the sea. The interior peak towered black
against the white-hot sky, with only the perpetual trade-wind cloud clinging to
the top of the extinct volcanic cone. The moment he stopped to consider the
rice paddy, insects collected in stinging, biting, chewing, crawling swarms.

Then Willi clutched his hand and he heard the creaking of a
bullock cart coming along the road. Thrashing sounds from the pursuit party
heading inland were suddenly louder. If they ran across the field, the
sight of two nearly naked Westerners would surprise the bullock driver out of
his wits, and certainly bring the chase party hot on their heels. He felt trapped.
Then he nodded briefly to the tall girl beside him.

“Stay here, Willi.”

“Please, Sam—”

“I’ll be careful.”

The cart came into sight, the heavy beasts slow and plodding,
their hoofs peculiarly light in the track. A scowling young Chinese in a blue
jumper spattered with mud and dung drove the cart. His broad face was irritated
and angry under a wide coolie hat of woven pandanus. At the sound of another
random shot, he looked toward the jungle growth near the beach, but not where
Durell and Willi crouched in hiding. He flicked a long whip over the
bullocks’ haunches and the huge animals lumbered on at an infinitesimally
faster pace.

Durell ran at a crouch behind a screen of vines, came out on
the road six feet behind the cart, and jumped for the hulking young Chinese. The
man’s squawk of alarm was cut off by a hard jab in his throat by Durell’s stiffened
fingers; his black eyes were wide for an instant at the sight of Durell, nearly
naked in his skin-diving suit, and then they glazed over and he toppled
unconscious from the cart seat. Durell leaped down after him, not wasting a
single motion, and dragged him out of sight into the brush. He could only hope
that luck would keep the coolie out of the enemy‘s way. Then he yelled at the
bollocks and as they lumbered forward toward the house on its stilts at the
other end of the field, Willi came streaking from the jungle and landed
on the seat beside him.

The cart’s contents of fertilizer were not the most fragrant
cargo they might have carried. The lumbering bullocks, their dim senses stirred
to vague alarm, moved at a faster pace toward the hut. Durell urged them on,
and when they turned automatically into a lean-to shed, he jumped off, grabbed
Willi and swung her clear and into the doorway of the farmer‘s hut just as a
party of excited, armed men burst into the clearing across from them.

                                                                                               
chapter
fifteen

BY GOOD chance, the Chinese farmer had no wife, or if he
had, she was working elsewhere. The hut was empty. A bamboo ladder led them at
breakneck pace onto a tiny verandah and into the hot, shadowed interior. The
floor was of polished teak planks. There was a kerosene stove, a pandanus
sleeping mat in one corner, and a rough wooden table in another. The hut
smelled of cooking, human sweat, and coconut oil. Durell hunted about for
Weapons first. The best he could find was a machete about two feet
long. The wooden handle was small for his grip, but its broad, weighted blade felt
good. In the shadows of the hut, Willi moved about looking for clothes, her
feminine instinct somehow appalled by her half-naked state, now that she was no
longer near the sea.

She found a blue smock that she slid over her head with a
quick, graceful gesture. Its folds of bleached cotton came only to a few inches
below her hips, and made her look even more desirable than before. But her
morale was improved. She managed a tremulous smile.

“Are they coming?”

“They’re certain to search here. ‘Wait a minute.”

He was reminded of long afternoons in the green light of the
Louisiana bayous, hunting coon with Grandpa Jonathan’s dogs, occasionally
rousing a tricky swamp fox. The wild chase often ended up with the quarry
doubling back and hiding on their back trail, while long hours of exhausted
effort
 
went in stumbling through muddy
swamp, stung and harassed by insects, in a useless chase for a trail that no longer
existed. He tore a leaf from his memory and applied it to the present.