Assignment - Sulu Sea (22 page)

She shook her head. “I can’t weigh things the way you do, or
see it through your eyes.”

“I’m glad you can’t, Willi.”

She looked at him for a long, sober moment. “I’m so sorry I
could die, Sam, because for a little time I had a dream about us . . . and now
I know it wouldn’t work.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” he said.

“Malachy helps people, easing their hurts and pains. And that’s
the way I want it. I don’t want to think about atomic clouds poisoning the
earth. I want to sail the Tarakuta and do a little trading and watch the wind
clouds and—be with Malachy.”

He said: “Then you should tell him this.”

They gained a mile in the next hour, hacking through the jungle.
The heat grew thicker, and the Chinese muttered and Wanted to turn back. Fong
urged them on, his gestures desperate. They came upon a giant tangle of vines
and parasitic growths, great mushroom blooms that reflected a look of evil
whenever the lanterns touched them. Other parasites were huge, spongy masses
ten feet across, hanging in gray sacs on trees they shared in a symbiotic life.
There were vines covered with what seemed like a fine down, but when a
Hakka pulled one aside, the down turned out to be fine,
sawtoothed
needles that ripped his flesh through to the
bone. There were seed pods that, shaken loose, stung and tormented the skin
wherever they landed, and fruitlike things that changed color when the
flashlights touched them and moved and swayed, grasping at the
uncountable insects that hummed and sang every moment of the way. There were
great gray leeches the size of a man’s fist that softly, silently
attached themselves to a passing man's arm or leg, so gently that the victim
was unaware of his passenger until the next man noticed it and had to make the
thing withdraw from the flesh by burning it with the tip of a cigarette.
But there was no halt for another hour, until Durell estimated it was midnight.
They had gained less than four miles across the width of the island.

There was a constant pelting of ‘not raindrops from the stifling
canopy of leaves above. Once one of the Hakka began to scream, on the high
ululating note of hysteria. Fong was instantly upon the man, smashing at him
with his gun to knock him insensible. He signaled the two nearest guerillas to
carry the unconscious man thereafter.

Willi kept steadily in the lead. Now and then she paused to
search the darkness as if she could see through the impenetrable foliage for a
landmark. It seemed to Durell that no one could tell if they were traveling in
circles or not. It was like stumbling blindfolded through a black nightmare.

They had come to a high, level plateau, but there was no chance
to glimpse the sea and the port of Bangka which was their goal. Willi halted
again. She moved uneasily a few paces to the right and left, and came back to
Durell, biting her lip.

“Things have changed from the way Grandpa described it,” she
said. “There was a big blow-down here, and when the Japanese chased Grandpa
this far into the rain forest one time, he saved himself by burrowing into it
like a rabbit diving into a briar patch. In twenty years, perhaps it all rotted
away, but if not—well, then we’ve gone wrong somewhere.”

Fong said mildly: “We are lost, Miss Wilhelmina?” In the
Soft lantern glow, Willi’s face was pale. She had tied up her long hair, but
thick strands had been plucked loose by vines and thorns. She said: “If it were
daylight, we might be able to take our bearings, but it’s as dark as a pocket, right
now. I doubt if one could ever see the sun in this forsaken place,
anyway."

“What came after the blow-down?” Durell asked.

"Oh, there were some cliffs and caves where pygmy aborigines
lived, but the Japanese killed them all. Then some rock ledges under mud. And
another swamp. But I think there is a stream there, and we can follow it all
the way down to the coast. The trouble is to get across the spine and find
the ledges.”

“I think we're on them now,” Durell said. He stamped his
foot on the earth. “We’ve been walking on spongy stuff all the way, and this is
the first time the ground feels solid.”

Willi was startled. “But the blow-down—”

“I think we just hacked our way through it.”

It turned out that Durell was right. The undergrowth thinned
quickly with the next few steps, and the machetes were no longer necessary. A
sense of freedom, of escape from the hot oppression of the jungle, enlivened
everyone’s step for the next twenty minutes.

But the swamp began again.

The going was downhill, indicating that they had truly crossed
Bangka’s height. But it was here that they lost three of their men. One was
bitten by a snake that dropped from a vine overhead, and despite Malachy’s
frantic efforts with a crude scalpel, fashioned from a jungle knife, the
Chinese went rigid and died in less than five minutes. The others would
not abandon the body, and there was a parley until it was arranged that the
dead man would be carried with them. The two other lost Hakka men were not
missed in the silent, dripping swamp until it was too late to recover them. The
group halted and called and called. Fong sweated, his face anxious, worrying
about the families of the men, swearing at their stupidity at the same time
that he yielded to his concern for them. His voice Went crashing through the
swamp, only to fall, muffled, against the oppressive drip of sap and resin and
gummy water that fell from above. It was like throwing a ball into a blanket.
The only answer was a single, sharp shriek of a disturbed parakeet.

In the darkness, the danger of others straying and becoming
lost became the greatest hazard. Even in daylight, within the thick, enveloping
heat and oppressive growth, it would have been difficult to maintain contact.
Each man was told to hang on to the man ahead. Bodily contact was the only way to
avoid further disaster. And even this did not prevent one more man from
mysteriously vanishing before they found the stream Willi was looking for.

It was more like a mucky, stagnant pond, a thing that smelled
so foul and evil that they all recoiled from it. But Willi insisted it had to
be followed or they would never find their way free again.

“Grandpa Joseph called this the ‘Path of Stepping-Stones,’ ”
she said. “You must follow the right-hand bank of the stream, going down.
Otherwise, the mud will swallow us all; it’s twenty and thirty feet deep, he
said. But on this side there are submerged rocks that we have to probe for, one
for every step of the way. No one must slip or fall. It would be best if the
men tied themselves together, and each one must put his feet exactly in the
place where the man before him stepped. Please make it clear to everyone, Fong.”

The Chinese looked uncertain, then bobbed his round head,
and spoke to the men gathered behind them. Again there were murmurs, but
Malachy spoke in quick Cantonese to back up Fong’s authority, and there were
reluctant nods.

Fong cut a score of strong bamboo poles for probes, and Willi
led the way, testing each step with awesome precision while Durell and Malachy
held torches for her. Progress was agonizing. Because of their inability to
move quickly, the insects found them a helpless quarry, and proceeded to feast by
biting, stinging, chewing and gnawing upon any exposed skin. Now and then
great, foul gaseous bubbles broke in slow motion upon the surface of the mud. It
seemed impossible to find solid footing through the stinking ooze and
debris that lined the bank of the stream. What creatures watched their progress
was anyone’s guess, Durell thought. He did not want to think about it. All his
attention was centered on the girl, fearful that she might slip and fail to
find the stepping-stones under the mud.

Somehow, the time passed.

The land sloped gradually downward, and for a short time,
the foliage turned oddly stunted and yellow in the light of their torches. It
was with a sudden burst of relief that Durell realized they had come out from
under the shadow of the perpetual rain-cloud that clung to the summit of Bangka,
and he could see the ocean again and the stars overhead.

It was like waking from a nightmare. The men recovered as if
wakened from a deadly trance, slowly at first, and then with quickening
spirits as their feet found firm soil, as their eyes caught the
brilliance of the Southern Cross and the vast panoply of stars overhead. It was
like a reprieve from hell.

Far below was a cluster of lights, arranged along a rectangular
pier where a rusty merchantman of about 7,000 tons was moored. From this height
and distance, the ship and endless bucket-chain of tin ore looked like a
child’s toy. The floodlights, however, like those of a prison compound, picked out
everything with merciless clarity. Durell saw Hakka workmen moving down there
like motes, and trucks came regularly from what appeared to be a thick,
jungly
growth to the left of the tin-roofed warehouses of
the little port. The contents of the trucks could not be identified.

Fong‘s men straightened their shoulders, lit cigarettes, and
chattered with new animation. A sharp whistle from Fong brought them back into
military’ discipline. They rested, squatting on their haunches, and waited as
Fong joined Durell and Malachy.

Directly below was a coconut plantation, the trees arranged
in neat, orderly rows that would give quick access to the road beyond. A dog
barked at them and then ran away.

Durell pointed to the distant pier. “Ch’ing has been alerted.
You can see the guards there, and they look like more than he’d ordinarily
have.”

“It is true,” Fong nodded. He smiled at Willi. “You swim through
jungle like you swim in lagoon, Miss Wilhelmina. We thank you for our lives.”

“We’re not finished yet,” Durell said. “Ch’ing has
more on his mind than us. He knows about the raiding boats in the channel
tonight that sank one of the Malay fishermen. He can’t know for certain
where they are now. So we’re up against a double alert and have to be doubly
careful. I assume Ch’ing holes up in that old Portuguese fortress down there. It
looks as tough as it was three hundred years ago.”

From what Durell could see of it, Prince Ch’ing had renewed
the old fort built by the first European merchants to reach these fabled
spice islands. It loomed on a promontory across the harbor, surrounded, as it
must have been in the old days of the Sultanate, by the nipa huts of the Dusuns
and Malays, kept at a clear distance, however, from the solid coral walls.

Durell hadn’t expected to see the whale-shaped hull of the Jackson
in this hidden little port. But he had hoped for a glimpse of something to
verify his decision to come here, to justify all they had endured.

He searched the harbor again. As the Hakka men shouldered
their weapons and started downhill through the coconut plantation at a jog
trot, he became aware of a blotting darkness in the sky, a swift devouring of
the brilliant stars. It was as if a giant mouth had opened from over the horizon
to swallow up the light of the heavens.

There was a brief moment of utter stillness, of heat and oppressive
electric tension, before the wind struck again.

Before they had to duck before the onslaught, he finished
his hard, slow inspection of the harbor.

There was no sign of a submarine down there.

                                                                                     
chapter
nineteen

THE STORM was a solid wall of black, howling fury, a screaming,
lashing, explosive force that tore off the treetops and made the supple coco
palms creak and bend like giant bows. Dust, sand, sea spume, leaves, vines,
small squealing things, fluttering and helpless birds, bits of human
debris from smashed huts, bits of coral and rain that felt like a cold whip—all
the accumulated violence of the elements struck the little party with Durell
with the solid force of a battering ram.

The men fell fiat and clung to roots and rocks and to each
other for several terrifying seconds.

Then the blast passed over them and it was calm again, except
for an ominously pelting rain.

“Get up!” Durell called. “Run for it, and get ready to drop
for the next one!”

It was almost a mile downhill, most of it through open plantation,
some of it through the muddy streets of the village. Although the sky was a
black churning obscurity, there was a strange, white luminosity on the sea that
Durell finally identified as a solid layer of flying spume
and foam. He ran beside Willi and Malachy and shouted above the hiss of the
rain.

“How much high water can we expect?”

“Plenty,” Willi gasped. “If the
Tarakuta
isn’t out of the Bangka Passage, she’ll be driven half a
mile inland when the big waves come. But maybe it will miss this port. This
kind of storm has a small cyclonic center that’s unpredictable. You can’t tell
where it will hit.”

She pushed impatiently at her wet, heavy hair while Durell studied
the confusion in the port below. Whatever the danger, the storm was a help. The
loading operations at the freighter dock had stopped. Some of the light standards
on the pier were twisted so that the floodlight beams shot futilely skyward
instead of on the winches. Men ran about in the panic of a disturbed anthill.
Durell spoke to the girl and Malachy.

“Take a hard look down there. Does anything look different
to you, at all? You’ve seen this place once or twice before, haven’t you?”

A long file of the Hakka guerillas trotted by while
the girl frowned and bit her lip. At last she said: “The port seems—smaller,
somehow. Its shape seems changed.”

“How?” he asked sharply. “Can you make out any camouflage
nets? That might explain the difference.”

The rain halted at this moment and gave them all a clear view
of the harbor and its loading facilities, as far as the grim, ancient
battlements of the Portuguese fortress.