Assignment - Sulu Sea (21 page)

It seemed as if the night exploded with light.

A sharp command in Chinese cracked from the jungle beside
them. A warning shot woke screaming echoes in the hot tension of the tropic
forest. Tommy Lee made a small sound of fear in his throat. And then, on every
hand, on both sides of the river and the footbridge, there stepped ragged-looking,
armed coolies in wide hats of woven pandanus.

“Why, these are Hakka people,” Willi whispered.

A thickset Chinese in a stained khaki uniform, with British shorts,
socks and low jungle boots, came toward them. He wore lieutenant’s pips on his
shoulder straps, and he carried a Sten gun with familiarity in his square
hands. The other Hakka were also armed with Stens. They looked tense and desperate.

“Ch’ing’s men?” Durell asked Lee softly. He looked at the other’s
panic-stricken face. “It this is a trap you set for us, you die first.”

“No, I didn’t! I swear—!”

Lee’s panic brought disaster. He cried out as the Hakka closed
in from the dark jungle, then abruptly he turned and ran back toward the car.
The man in command called out in a thin voice, but Lee kept running. There came
a single burst from a Sten and the Chinese stumbled and flew headlong through
the air. The automatic burped again in short, efficient bursts, and Lee’s body
jerked and jumped with the impact of a dozen more slugs. He jackknifed and
rolled over and was still.

The guerilla leader walked toward Durell. His thin voice was
as cold as a polar night.

“Drop your machete, or you will go next.”

                                                                                     
chapter
eighteen

ARGUMENT burst out in emotional Cantonese as the Hakka gathered
about their commander. Durell eyed them with care in the lantern light. These
were not the armed men who had first driven Willi and himself off the
beach; they were more like the peasant hermit Willi knew as Fong, whose hut had
been burned out. He felt a quick stir of hope.

“Lee is dead, Willi,” he said quietly. “Don’t look
hack
at him. Can you speak Cantonese?”

“Are you sure Lee is dead?” she asked tightly.

“He was a fool to sell our security at Pandakan in the first
place, and then he was stupid to fall into Ch’ing’s hands. He had no place to
go. It was too late for him. He knew it and I knew it. So forget about Tommy
Lee.”

She shivered and looked back at Lee’s twisted body anyway.
He could not tell her that the Chinese had really been a dead man from the
moment he first betrayed to Ch’ing the route of the Jackson in these
waters. Treason was punished quickly and unofficially these days. Lee
must have welcomed the bullets that cut him down; but Willi couldn‘t understand
this. Her world of sunny, tropic seas still clung to the old normal values of
morality—values that often had to be jettisoned in his work.

Before she could reply, one of the guerillas came forward,
shouting in enraged Cantonese, and smashed at Durell with the butt of his Sten
gun. Durell ducked the blow, but some of its force caught his shoulder. The
Hakka screamed again and pointed the gun at him, and Willi cried out. Then someone
ran across the swaying footbridge, shouting an order. It was Fong.

“Fong, tell them we’re friends!” Durell snapped.

There were angry recriminations, and the coolie with the British
Sten gun retreated, wiping his nose. Most of these men were armed with Stens.
Fong, the hermit-farmer, spoke to the Chinese in the faded British uniform and
pointed to Durell and the girl, then back to the bridge. The big peasant was a
changed man from the cringing farmer who had watched his house wantonly burned
only hours ago. His deference was gone. He was armed with a sharp kris, a
Walther‘s P-38, and a Sten; he looked hard, tough and assured. He snapped an
order and one of the Hakka tossed an automatic to Durell, who caught it, nodded
thanks, and hooked the strap over his shoulder. Now and then he heard, among
the high Cantonese inflections, the name of Dr. McLeod.

“Is Fong saying that Malachy is here with these men?” he
asked Willi.

The girl nodded. “Malachy is across the river. Fong says he
came ashore to look for me and met these men. It‘s all right. Fong has helped
me when I hunted in the lagoon for some specimens. I gave him gifts now and
then, but he—he looks so bloodthirsty right at the moment—”

“He should be,” Durell said dryly. “I think we’ve walked into
a budding rebellion against Ch’ing, on this island.”

Fong snapped an order and they were hurried across the dark,
swaying bridge. The men seemed under sharp pressure.

Fong spoke to Willi and she shook her head and pointed hack
to Tommy Lee’s riddled body. Fong shrugged and spoke in Malay to one of the
men, who brought sneakers for Durell and the girl to replace their flimsy
sandals. Then they heard Malachy’s cry.

“Willi,
me
own darlin’ girl!”

Malachy loomed huge and keg-chested out of the stilling night
across the river. He hugged Willi and lifted her off her feet in his
enthusiasm, ignoring the grinning Hakka men. Then he set her down abruptly and
glared at Durell.

“Are ye both all right?" At Durell’s nod, Malachy
added: “I came ashore in the dinghy off Tandjoeng Petak, and scarce got across
the beach, it’s so thick with Ch’ing’s hoodlums. Found your trail at Fong‘s
burned-out farm—saw the smoke and headed for it, figuring it might have
to do with you, Samuel—and ran into Fong. He’d jumped off the jeep and got away
from those takin’ him to Ch’ing. I must admit I’ve been cultivating this lad as
carefully as he tends his rice paddy. Some of our home politicians might be
timid of such interference in domestic politics, such as encouraging Fong’s insurrection,
but I see it as potentially good for our side, and I say he damned to the
scarebellies back home.”

Durell cut off the wild-bearded man’s flow of words.
“How many men do we have? I see about eighty, at a guess.”

“Close enough. It‘s a sort of local Minute Man outfit
aimed to keep off raiding guerillas and alleged ‘freedom fighters’ from
down Indonesia way. Fong thinks his islands ought to run their own affairs. I
don’t blame him.” Malachy’s grin faded as he studied Willi. “You’re awful
quiet, me girl.” He looked suspiciously at Durell. “Anything happen between you
two?”

“Willi is a little shaken because we saw Tommy Lee shot and
I did nothing to stop it. I think she’d rather be like you, Malachy, and help
the sick and wounded.”

“You didn’t even go back to see if he was still alive, Samuel,”
she whispered. “It seemed so—so—”

“Here, here,” Malachy said. He seemed suddenly very cheerful.
“Don’t you two start quarrelin’ now. We’ve got enough quarrelin’ to do tonight
with Ch’ing and his bully boys.”

Durell called in Fong and discussed the situation with Malachy.
It was ten o’clock in the evening, and the night waited for them. The dark heat
seemed more oppressive than the baleful violence of the day. Some of Fong’s men
cut the rope bridge, at Durell's order, to hinder possible pursuit across the
gorge by the enemy. Durell suggested then that Willi could guide them across
the island through the rain forest.

“True, the beaches are like armed camps tonight,"
Malachy admitted. “But have you ever been in a rain forest? And at night? Most
of these men have lived on Bangka all their lives and never set foot in it.
Malachy looked at the girl. “Do you think you can lead us through, honey?”

“Grandpa described the trails he used often enough.”

Aye, but it’s night, and twenty years later!”

Durell said. I think we must do it, Malachy.”

McLeod shrugged. “So be it, then. But ’twill give us nightmares
for years to come, I’m thinking.”

There was dismay on some of the Hakka faces when the plan for
the march was described to them. Fong did the talking, now and then jabbing a
thumb at Willi’s tall figure. The men shifted their feet and muttered
uneasily. But eventually they agreed, their broad faces displaying obvious reluctance.

No time was wasted in starting off.

Willi walked between Durell and Malachy. An odd tension existed
between them. Two flankers went ahead on the trail that led upland from the
coastal plain to the mountain spine. They passed one deserted paddy, a
tin-roofed shack, and an abandoned coconut plantation. Every step brought a
fresh outpouring of sweat from their bodies as they began to climb. In twenty
minutes, the trail ended and they reached the base of a dark, basaltic cliff.
Erosion had crumbled the bleak rock and left an easy path by which they could
reach the top.

The rain forest, caused by the perpetual trade-wind cloud, began
here. It was like stepping onto another planet.

Beyond the cliff was a spongy swamp a morass of decay and
sour, waterlogged muck that exuded an odor that clung to their skin, hair and
nostrils. Willi did not flinch. Malachy’s torch pointed the way ahead,
and there was a murmur from the Hakka behind them. Then they marched on.

Mangroves grew here, in brackish water, the trees anchored
by thick, knobby roots that pretended to offer solid footing, only to prove
slippery with a slime that twisted the ankle and curved off into the wet muck
so that the men began to fall and splash into the evil-smelling earth. At the
same time, the air developed an oppressive heaviness that filled the lungs
with sour moisture and the spirit with a sense of unnatural danger.

Willi did not hesitate. She led the way forward, her tall figure
now and then illuminated in the flashes of light from the men
floundering behind. She did not speak or explain how far the swamp
extended, and Durell began to think that the mangroves, surprisingly situated
so far inland, would go on forever. Within five minutes every man was
covered with the slick slime, from having fallen at least once from what seemed
a purchase.

Not even a sudden raucous shriek from directly overhead made
Willi pause, although Durell’s sweat turned chill with the strangling sound.
The column halted. A dozen flashlights searched the foliage. The night
sky could not be seen, since they were under the perpetual cloud cover near the
island’s peak, But in its place, a million opalescent, dusted wings winked and
glittered and darted and fluttered in disturbance at the light. Round,
primitive eyes stared from small furry creatures that seemed transfixed
by the presence of men in this place.

The outlandish shriek was repeated.

This time Durell’s flashlight found its source. It was
a rust-red bird of paradise, disturbed in its roost by their passage, as gaudy
and as coarse as one of Ch’ing’s pleasure-women. There was a collective sigh of
relief and the party moved on.

The trip would take most of the night. There was no help for
it, Willi said, since only roundabout trails could be used to cross the rain
jungle. There were swamps where snakes and crocodiles made it too dangerous to
attempt a passage.

No one argued with her.

After a time, when they left the swamp and came to an area
with firmer footing but denser foliage, it began to rain. It was like no
rainstorm Durell had ever experienced. It did not rain in separate drops, but
in solid sheets of tepid water that gushed, poured, pounded, pelted and tumbled
from the high trees. All in an instant, they were soaked to the skin, but there
was no relief in it. Their sweat mixed with the rain and provided a slickness
that seemed beyond endurance for another minute. But they marched on, each man
following in the footsteps of the man ahead, unknowing and no longer caring
where they went, as long as the noise and incredible weight of falling water
struck them. They were stunned by the downfall.

The rain ended as suddenly as it began, except that vagrant Winds,
unfelt at ground level, shook the huge leaves above, and they kept walking
through slow, slimy drippings for the next hour. It was Durell who called a
rest halt when he saw the Hakka men begin to stagger and fall.

He sat beside Willi, his back against the hole of a broad, spongy
tree. Bamboo thickets soared high out of range of their strongest
flashlights, and a hundred thousand orchids glowed in the light of their
lanterns. They had climbed, he estimated, almost to the top of the island, and
now, directly ahead, there was a solid Wall of vegetation that would take hours
of hacking with knives and machetes to get through.

“Are you all right, Willi?” he asked quietly.

Her eyes searched the small gathering of men around them.
“Where is Malachy?”

“He‘s tending to one of the men who fell and cut himself. Answer
me, Willi. You look strange.”

“I’m as right as Malachy, and as wrong as you are."

“That doesn’t make sense.”

She hugged her knees and looked away. Her cheek was scratched
by a thorn, and there was mud on her chin. It made her seem more desirable. She
said: “You’ve worked with death so long, Sam, it doesn’t touch you anymore. Or doesn’t
seem to. If Lee was a traitor, he was unable to help himself, I think. Lots of
us are like that. He didn’t know which way to turn, and he chose the wrong way.
Can‘t you feel sorry for him?"

Durell said harshly: “He wanted to die, Willi. He knew there
was nothing left for him.”

“Couldn’t you have helped him?”

“I’d have testified against him on charges of treason. If he
were lucky, he’d have spent the rest of his life in Leavenworth for betraying
our codes to Ch’ing and the Reds. Lee became an enemy when he sided with
Peiping and the Red ideology of building Communism on the atomic ashes of millions
of innocent people. How does that weigh against mercy for Tommy? You think
Lee’s crime was small in itself, justified by his need to protect his
parents back in China. But if Ch‘ing wins here, Tommy gave away sixteen A-3
missiles, each with a one-megaton warhead, each able to turn a large city to useless
cinders. Is that a small crime, Willi?"