China Sea (31 page)

Dahakit was an isolated dot of land far to the west of Luzon. The chart informed him it had been surveyed by Comdr. N. P. H. Harkins, R.N., HMS
Blazon
, in 1894, with additions and corrections from a Japanese survey in 1937. The longitude of all points depended on Tokyo Meteorological Observatory being in Longitude 139° 44' 41'' East. It was an atoll formation, with four comma-shaped islands spaced around a central lagoon. The largest was about half a mile long. Dan eyed the chart for a long time, weighing his options. Noting the group of men standing on the bow, looking toward the atoll as it slowly rose from the sea.

Jim Armey, at his elbow, wiping his hands on a rag. The engineer's overalls were filthy and wet. Dark circles rimmed eyes that looked like accesses to hell. He said in an undertone, “Thinking of dropping the hook, Skipper? Swim call, at least?”

“There's no reason to stop here.”

“Lot of heat stress down below. Since the air-conditioning went down. We haven't been seeing you in the engine spaces like we used to.”

“I've got a lot on my plate up here.”

“Sure you do, but you ought to know something else, too. You tie a safety down long enough, something explodes. The word is things are going to start breaking down in earnest if we don't stop at that island.”

Dan gritted his teeth. “Not you, too, Jim.”

Armey said quietly, “Hey, I'm on your side. Greg came around to talk to me about you. I told him to pound sand. But if somebody stuffs a rag into an oil line, we're gonna have permanent damage.” He shaded his eyes at the island. “Inhabited?”

“Couple of hundred people, according to the sailing directions.”

“It's real wearing, steaming shorthanded like we are.”

“You want to lay over a couple of days, Jim? Is that what you're saying, in your subtle way?”

“I wouldn't say no,” Armey said, looking ahead with a strange, distant expression. “Just to get some shut-eye would be nice. But even if we anchor, I guess we'll have to keep a steaming watch.”

Dan weighed it, looking at the chart again. He'd been thinking about anchoring off, using the atoll for a shelter and putting the hook down to the south. But the bottom went almost straight down. They'd have to drop close to some wicked-looking reefs.

Or they could go inside. The eastern entrance was charted at eight fathoms. The lagoon within beckoned with twelve to twenty, adequate depths and good holding ground. That seemed deep for a coral atoll, but he checked three times to make sure it was fathoms, not yards or feet or meters, and fathoms was what the chart said.

He slowly realized everybody in the pilothouse was stealing glances at him. The men on the forecastle were staring up at the bridge. He didn't like the appearance of being forced to acquiesce. But they were right—they'd gone without even a step ashore for a long time. And sometimes giving a crew what they wanted was the best way to reassert control. With the hook down they could save fuel, too. There wasn't much point in steaming around aimlessly, waiting for things to clarify themselves.

“Sea and anchor detail, Mr. Doolan,” he said, and suddenly everyone in the pilothouse became very busy.

They approached from the eastward, very slowly, preceded in by the inflatable in case the old charts had missed a pinnacle or did not show a Second World War wreck. The northerly swell boiled cream on long ribbons of reef as they inched toward the eastern gap. Dan searched it with his binoculars as they neared. The hydrography showed the unmistakable slope of a volcanic upthrust, but at the surface it was a classic atoll formation. Level and low, a crew cut of white coral sand and coconut palms, so flat a typhoon must strip it bare.

A clatter from aft. The boatswains, checking out the engine on the other RHIB. The crew gathered along the lifelines, staring shoreward as
Gaddis
moved gradually into shallow turquoise and indigo, between ivory patches of reef. Gulls soared in their wake, crying despairing warnings. Ahead the channel looked emerald deep. The fathometer was tracking with the old survey so far, showing a good six fathoms, twelve meters, beneath the frigate's tentative keel. The entrance gradually narrowed, and Chick slowed to one-third, barely creeping ahead. The bow wave chuckled. The surf boomed and thundered. Shoals seethed to starboard. Squinting into the flat, dull light, Dan shaded his eyes to search for patches closer in. He was not immune to the ever-shifting colors, the play of hue and sound, but his mind was with the ship. If she bent a prop here or gashed her hull plating against a coral head, they might never get out again.

Then she was inside, the churning reef fell astern, and he breathed again. The depth fell away to dark green, then to a hazy, light-filled, translucent blue. The ripple of energy from bow and quarter furrowed the lagoon. White fingernails of surf clawed out toward a close horizon above which the sky bleached pale as if scrubbed with lye. A couple of miles distant he made out boats, moored not far from the flat, dark mass of the principal island.

Doolan gave the word to drop on cross-bearings from cuts on two of the islands. He put the engines astern until Dan was satisfied the anchor was set. They had room to swing. Four thousand yards to the nearest shoal water. He called the engine room and told Armey he could pull fires, but to keep an aux diesel running. The inflatable in the water circled back, the coxswain looking up for instructions. Dan leaned out from the wing and motioned him in.

*   *   *

“SHALLOWING fast, sir.”

“We can't draw a lot more than those canoes,” Dan told them, pointing to the outriggers drawn up on the beach ahead. “Keep going.”

He'd told Chick he had the CDO; he was going ashore to check things out. Making Chick the command duty officer avoided the awkward question of Juskoviac's status. The crew staying behind had watched with a curious mixture of envy and hope as they cast off. Now
Gaddis
was a separate world astern, hunting slowly back and forth to the hook. He gave her one last, long look, then faced forward again.

The island drew slowly closer as they purred on. Wooden-hulled fishing smacks with astern wheelhouses rode off a collapsing pier. The canoes were drawn up under the flickering shadows of the palms. He didn't see any human figures, though as they neared he made out structures beneath the trees that covered the rest of the island. The whole scene lay in an ominous silence, save for the endless sigh of the trade wind under a close gray sky. The water was so clear that looking down, he saw sharks nosing along the bottom.

The coxswain beached them near the pier. Dan stood and looked carefully around. The lagoon was sheltered, but the thunder of the surf still underlay everything, a foundation of sound so steady it was almost silence. The RHIB shrugged in the shallows. He saw nothing moving onshore. Only the coconut palms swayed slowly, and the obscurity beneath them could hide anything. He smelled smoke and something strange he could not identify, that he'd never smelled before. He knelt on the pitching thwart, then levered himself down into water warm as blood and began wading toward shore.

Fifty yards out he made out the first figures, brown against pink-white sand, waiting in the shadows. Twenty yards out a patch suddenly detached itself and moved into the sunlight. It was an old man in a short-sleeved khaki shirt so faded it was closer to white than its original tan. Dan gave him a salute as he splashed up onto the beach, and the old man returned it, snapping to attention and whipping his hand up to his forehead.

“Good morning, sir. I am Philip Kalapadon, Sergeant, Philippine Scouts, Retired.”

Dan introduced himself, shaking the fragile hand, uncomfortably conscious of the brown faces that thronged close, gazing up into his. Kalapadon did not release it. Instead he turned and began walking inland, past the shoal of drawn-up outriggers. Dan looked back at the men in the boat, motioned them to stay with it. Then he followed. Kalapadon pushed through the crowd like a canoe through white water. He said something and laughter rippled. Dan nodded, forcing a smile. They came to a coral wall. “What's this?” he said.

“Pig wall.”

“What?”

But Kalapadon was climbing over, damn near vaulting it, still holding Dan's hand to steady himself. “Circles the island. We live inland.”

They crossed a belt of coconut palms and emerged onto a path. Suddenly the air was cooler, damp-smelling, like a limestone cave. Dan wiped his forehead gratefully. The path was smooth. Not sand but worn white rock. It was not quite wide enough to be called a road. The palms arched over it in a tunnel of whispering shadows.

“The village is that way,” Kalapadon said. “You see? Gives shelter from the typhoons.”

The path curved and two young girls appeared, hand in hand. They stopped, staring astonished at Dan, then bowed to Kalapadon, greeting him respectfully. He spoke a few words, and they dropped their eyes suddenly, crossing their arms over small adolescent breasts. Then ran, giggling, bare heels and pale soles flying up like the bobbing flags of fleeing deer.

The village was a scatter of open huts built on coconut logs and roofed with palm thatch or rusty sheet iron. Round-bellied iron pots squatted beneath them on blackened rocks. Fires smoked here and there. A black-and-white sow rooted at the high-tide mark. Four sucklings practiced around her, thrusting their snouts into the sand. A roofless outhouse perched over the water, colored strips of cloth fluttering in the steady wind.

The store was tacked together of weathered plywood and galvanized iron. A woman eyed the stranger as she fetched orange drinks from a kerosene-fueled refrigerator. Dan was relieved to see several cartons of cigarettes, both American brands and Japanese, and some cans of tobacco and rolling papers on the shelves. That would ease the tensions aboard
Gaddis
considerably.

They sat outside, on empty oil drums, as other gray-haired men joined them, squatting one by one on the sand. Naked children and closed-faced women watched from a safe distance.

When some sort of invisible quorum had been reached, Kalapadan cleared his throat politely. He began, “You are the captain of the American destroyer?”

“That's right.”

“We did not expect a visit from a U.S. Navy ship.”

“I was passing by and decided to stop. Let the men stretch their legs.”

“After the war, we saw many Americans. We were glad. Life was hard under the Japanese. An American LCI brought me back to the island from the prison camp. But it has been a long time since then. What brings you to us now?”

“We're on an anti-pirate patrol.”

“Ah, pirates.” The old man spoke rapidly to the others; a murmur passed around the circle. He was silent for a few seconds, as if deliberating on saying more. Finally he added, “You're hunting them, eh?”

“For a while, anyway,” Dan said.

“Good,” said Kalapadon. He looked out at the lagoon and sipped the soda slowly. “We're fishermen here. One Filipino government boat came here years ago. A small landing boat, with soldiers. That was in the Marcos time. We have not seen them back since.”

Dan leaned back against warm iron. Suddenly the can in his hand began to shake. He'd been under way so long, pressed with uncertainty and occasional terror. Now the palms cast dancing shadows on the powdery coral. Flies buzzed in the cool wind. For a moment fantasy gripped his mind. Give Juskoviac what he wanted. Let
Gaddis
go off over the horizon. Stay here; find a native girl; live in a hut for the rest of his life.

Beside him Kalapadon sat relaxed, body draped over the drum. He was smiling, watching three naked children playing what looked very much like hopscotch.

Dan cleared his throat. “My men would like very much to come ashore.”

“I think they would be welcome.”

“Do we need permission from the—” He'd been about to say “chief,” but that sounded so patronizing he groped for another word. “The local government. The mayor.”

“We don't have a mayor. If we have leaders, it would be the men you see around you here.”

Dan lifted his soft drink to them, and they nodded back solemnly. “I'd like to bring my crew ashore, half of them at a time—that would be about fifty men. It would be best if we had something arranged for them to do. Say if we set up on a beach, swimming, volleyball, maybe roast a pig—”

“That can be arranged.”

They discussed prices. The old men turned out to be canny bargainers. At last they settled on a hundred dollars for the feast. Pork, rice, fruit, and fermented coconut juice. They allowed as how there might even be a band, or at least that was what Dan understood. They came to an agreement and shook hands. He made himself get up not too long afterward, or he might have stayed forever, and Kalapadon led him back to the boat.

The crew was sitting under the trees, with a carpet of kids and young girls giggling and staring around them. The men looked pleased but disoriented, the way Dan felt. The ship was a distant gray nightmare beyond them. “OK, let's head back,” he told them.

“We going to pull liberty here, Captain? These are real friendly people.”

“All arranged. Port and starboard liberty, and a beach party tonight.”

They jumped to their feet, and he joined them, shouldering the inflatable from where it had been drawn up on the beach out until it floated free.

*   *   *

THE
Gaddis
men had been swimming and sunning themselves most of the afternoon, not going out far because the islanders warned them about the sharks. Now they gathered self-consciously as their hosts sang what seemed to be a hymn.

They sat together cross-legged on woven mats on the sand. Bowls of rice and taro, fried pork and fish and baskets of hot-hearted doughnuts went from hand to hand. Dan and the elders sat separate, a few yards up the beach. He ate a little rice, then tried the deep-fried tuna. It was crisp and fresh and very salty. He cleared his mouth with a swig of coconut tea. Beyond the shore
Gaddis
's lights rode steady and reassuring in the descending night. The air shivered to the rumble of surf. And not much later, a guitar began to sing, and girls' voices embarked on a plaintive melody.