Unsung warrior box set, p.18
Unsung Warrior Box Set, page 18
part #1 of Unsung Warrior Series
It was okay. Hoist didn’t look too happy about the situation, though. Probably pride, thought Maric. He was the only one of the recon team with any sort of wound.
“Can you see if any of the schooner crew have bought the big one-way ticket?” he said to Jinks. The paramedic began checking for pulse and breathing. Some of the crew were sitting up, nursing broken bones. None of them were likely to make a run for it in the near future.
Maric made his way back to the downstream schooner. Hendrik and Bert had strung up the captain first, then tried to bring him round.
“What did you do to him?” said Bert, slapping the captain one more time. He stayed determinedly unconscious.
“Hit him harder,” said Maric, “and if that doesn’t work tip a bucket of river water over him.” He sent Hendrik to relieve Mosha. When Mosha arrived, he took him aside and told him what he had in mind. Mosha thought for a moment, then nodded his agreement.
Maric sent Hendrik across to join Anderson. The two men shepherded their charges from the first schooner onto the deck in front of the mast. All of the crew that were still conscious were now assembled there. Most of them were nursing broken bones and sporting spectacular bruises, but they could walk. There was quite an audience for Maric’s interrogation of their new leader.
“You killed the old captain,” said Maric, slowly and clearly, once the man had come around.
“No, no, no,” he said, once he realized his predicament. “The captain owed some people money. They beat him up behind a kedai in Pontianak. I was with him. I think they killed him by mistake. I tried to stop them. I just escaped with my life!”
It was the sort of story Maric expected. The grog shops, or kedai, could be dangerous places. It fit the new captain’s story.
“Whatever you say,” he growled. “It’s all the same to me.”
Maric raised his hand, and Mosha stepped forward and cut the man’s cargo shorts off his body, leaving him bare from the waist down. He twisted in his bindings, and groaned at the loss of his dignity.
“Tell me, what do you believe in?” said Maric, stepping closer and looking directly into his captive’s eyes. The man’s feet were dangling well above the deck, and their eyes were level.
“An eye for an eye? Losing a hand for stealing? Stoning for a mortal sin?”
Bert corrected his Dayak, and he said the last part again.
“Or do you believe in a compassionate God?” he said, picking up the man’s sword from the deck. “One who might forgive you for such a sin?”
Maric tested the edge of the sword on the hairs of his arm, and shook his head. He drew a small, flat piece of grooved metal out of his pocked, and started to sharpen the cutting edge. He looked up while he was working, and nodded to Mosha.
Cutting the bottom off the man’s shirt, Mosha wound the piece of cloth around his genitals, and tied the material off tightly against his body.
Maric tried the sword on the hairs of his arm once again, and nodded.
His captive realized what was coming, and began to twist and squirm in his bindings. He started to yell for help. Maric’s hand shot out and closed around his neck. He stopped yelling when he couldn’t breathe..
“What do you think, ‘Captain’,” said Maric contemptuously. “Is there a compassionate God, who might forgive you?”
He took his hand away from the man’s neck, and closed one hand tightly around the bundle hanging below the man’s waist, and raised the sword to strike.
“I wanted the month’s wages,” bleated his captive, desperate for some sort of mercy. “I stole the key to the safe, but the captain came into the cabin when I thought he was sleeping.
“There were two of us on watch. Kelu owed me gambling debts. I said I’d forget about them if he helped me.”
Bert was translating for the recon team now. Maric was getting most of it, but not all. It was apparent the impostor had killed the captain for the wages. Not for the extra he thought he could make out of the cargo. That bright idea came later.
It was how the man had got the others to make him captain. He promised to make them rich by ransoming the crates.
“The captain saw what I was doing, and started to beat me with his fists. I drew my knife and killed him. Kelu and I threw him over the side. Then we said the captain had trouble sleeping, and had gone into Pontianak.
“The next night I went in to look for him, and said we’d been set upon by someone he owed money too. I made out the authorities had the body.”
Clever, thought Maric, the crew wouldn’t want anything to do with the Indonesian authorities.
The crew had forgotten their own predicament for the moment, and were following the drama being enacted before them. Now they began to mutter among themselves. There were codes of conduct on board a ship, even among men turned pirate. The murder of a serving captain was mutinous in any culture.
They drew back from a man in their center, and Maric presumed this was Kelu.
“You drew a knife on your captain, and you drew a knife on him when he was unarmed,” said Maric flatly.
“Mercy!” screamed the phony captain. “Forgive me!” he continued, tormented by thoughts of what Maric might do to him.
Maric brought the sword down hard and fast, reversing it at the last moment so the back of the blade struck the impostor sharply where the bundle of cloth met his body.
Mosha had deliberately tied the cloth off tightly, and that part of the man’s body had gone numb. There was a momentary shock of impact, and then an awful feeling of nothing.
The impostor screamed, and his eyes rolled back. He fainted, and his head sagged forward. Maric held out his hand for Mosha’s jo, and swung it low and hard. The man’s leg broke with a sharp retort, like a branch breaking off a tree.
It had been easier than Maric thought. The wood in the jo made it feel like he was wielding a steel pipe. At least he’d handed out the man’s punishment while he was unconscious.
It was a small mercy. The now deposed captain came around for a moment, gasped, and fainted again as the pain of the break swept over him.
As far as Maric was concerned, the books were now balanced. The man had paid his debt. It was fortunate the crew were in no state to take their own revenge on him. He’d be safe from them once the Indonesian police arrived.
CHAPTER 17
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One of the schooner crew was causing Jinks some real concern.
“It’s a major concussion,” said the paramedic. “I’ve stabilized him for the moment, but he needs an operation to relieve the pressure on his brain. And he needs it soon. God knows what hit him.”
Maric nodded, but inside he was worried. Hoist knew he had to take it easy around the head. Especially with weights in his gloves. They all knew that.
He hesitated. Had Hoist lost it, or had the sailor hit his head falling, or been hit accidentally by one of his own crew?
The problem would have to wait. For the moment Maric would continue to back his team. His makeshift plans to deal with a body weren’t going to be needed.
“We’ll be gone in five,” he told Jinks, “and we can call for an ambulance maybe five after that.”
Jinks nodded, and went back to monitoring the crewman’s reactions to the drugs he’d given him.
Maric checked the time. The whole operation had taken twelve minutes, and the remote location had seen it pass unnoticed. As far as Maric could tell. He scanned the pale track of the road a hundred meters off. Nothing moved there.
Hendrik and Anderson had carried the last two crates from the hold of the second schooner to the van. The crates stood shoulder high, but they weren’t wide or deep. The weight of them was the main thing.
The men stacked the crates one behind the back seat and three on it. Two of the team were going to have to squeeze in with others, or sit on the floor.
Maric climbed back onto the deck of the second schooner, and faced the Sea Dayaks sitting there. He had Bert help him with a little speech.
“We have a saying in my country, that following orders is no excuse. When your new captain said you could try and force more money from us, you didn’t have to agree. You could have walked away. Maybe started a new life somewhere else.
“Once you agreed to steal from us, you were as guilty as your captain.
“It was a stupid move. For one thing you might get your arses kicked, which is what has happened. More importantly, you will now lose people’s trust. Your old captain was trusted by important people. He got you well-paid jobs like transporting this cargo.
“Word will quickly spread that the Pontianak Sea Dayaks cannot be trusted. Work will disappear. Other crews will lose work as well, and they will want to make you pay for their loss. What will you do then?”
The crew began to mutter ominously, and there were a few death threats against the new captain.
“No!” said Maric, slamming the jo he was carrying onto the deck. “You chose to do this. Each one of you. You take the responsibility!”
The lowered their heads, and looked ashamed.
“Ambulance and Police will be here soon,” said Maric. “Don’t mention my team. Blame a Sulawesi crew for stealing your cargo.”
They nodded. Sulawesi Island, far to the east, was a largely lawless place. Bugi schooners and Iban pirates had originated there centuries before.
“Or we will come back,” said Maric ominously, and the Sea Dayaks nodded more vigorously.
“Time to go!” said Maric to the recon team. “Move out!”
When the van had reached the Pontianak suburbs, it took a side road. Maric pulled a cheap cell phone from his pocket. He called a number he’d already entered into it.
“Charles Pittams here,” he said, his voice taking on an English upper-class accent. “My family and I are visiting your lovely country. Our hosts have taken us for an evening walk to see the Bugi schooners at the docks.
“I’m sorry to say, there are badly hurt people everywhere! It looks like a battlefield! My wife is very upset.”
He stopped to listen to something.
“I’m sorry, I have no idea what happened. I don’t speak the language. Neither do my friends who are with us. It looks like a disaster area down here. It’s awful!
“Yes. Yes. I’ll stay here until help arrives. Please hurry!”
He dropped the cell phone on the floor of the van, and stomped on it. Mosha scooped it up and dropped it in the rubbish bag looped around the door lock.
Russo started laughing. “Did they teach you that at SAS school?” she said with a smile.
“Sometimes you’ve got to improvise,” said Maric. He directed Mosha along a wide boulevard that took them in the direction of the base house.
The team visibly relaxed now the op was over. They were once again anonymous in the Pontianak suburbs.
“The Bugi schooners were already pirate ships in the days of the tea clippers,” said Maric. “Middle of the 1800s. And they’ve stuck to that line of work ever since. There’s piracy in the shipping lanes round Singapore today.
“Parents used to frighten their children with the Bugi man, or bogeyman.”
A comfortable silence descended while the others digested this. The van lurched as the avenue ended in a maze of streets. Then it turned left toward the base house.
Maric cued the team on how they’d move the crates inside. He wanted them stacked in the smaller bedroom of the house.
“Sorry ladies,” he said to Bert and Russo. “You’ll have to take turns watching over the crates at night. It’s either that or have some of the men sitting in your room.”
There were a few catcalls at the suggestion, and Maric made a mental note about mixed units. Despite the fact they worked, sweated and fought together, the topic of bedrooms, wet T-shirts or bare-chested men still seemed to get a reaction. Some social conditioning was just too deeply embedded to change.
Maric figured it was the commander’s job to see there was enough respect and goodwill going both ways.
The van coasted to a stop in front of the base house. Keeping noise to a minimum, the team covered the crates in blankets and ferried them across the veranda. From there they took the crates to the smaller bedroom. It would be unrealistic to think no one saw them, but the locals would be hard pressed to recognize anything.
It was best to avoid rumors. The recon team would be heading inland for Dick’s palm oil plantation tomorrow anyway. And from there to the Bukit Baka Bukit Raya national park.
The team took a little time to wind down. Mostly they rehashed the operation on the docks, until Maric ordered an early night. It was going to be the last full night’s sleep they would get for a while.
They cut short their time at the dojo in the morning, and made sure the Aikido master knew how helpful he had been. He refused payment of any kind. If he noticed a few new dings in the jos he didn’t comment.
A convoy of four vehicles left for the interior after lunch. Many of the passengers were Dayaks. They’d replace others who’d been working long stretches at the palm oil plantation at Sanggau. Maric, Russo and Bert rode in the land rover at the front with Dick, while the rest of the team rode in the van. They’d ditched the crates, but the combination of weapons and survival gear, along with five passengers, was about all the van could take.
The van was third in the convoy as it took the long, bumpy bridge over the Kapuas to the tightly bunched northern suburbs. The Kapuas swirled its way below them at dizzying speeds. Then they were back on good quality tar seal.
They left the suburbs and drove north along sandy beaches lined with tropical palms.
“I want you all out pushing when we hit the logging roads,” said Mosha. He was reminding them of his privileged driver status. Someone reached over and cuffed him on the back of the head. There were snorts of laughter.
In some ways this was the perfect tropical holiday they’d never had. In other ways it was leading them into God knew what. At least they had nothing to do for the moment. Except keep the ever-curious Dayaks away from the tightly bound bundles that filled the back of the van.
Hoist still had his head bandaged. Jinks had decided to leave the stitches in until the op was over. He’d cover the area with a war-zone quality liquid skin in a day or two. The tropics was a dangerous place for wounds.
In the lead car Russo and Bert were enjoying the exotic landscape. It was a landscape well known to Maric. He’d taken his SAS leave in Kalimantan many times when he was in Afghanistan.
Bert and Maric had hoped to improve their Dayak, but Dick was telling them about his life in Borneo, and had switched back to English.
“Most of the work at the plantations will be done in the coming months. The start of the dry season is the best time. Pruning saws on the ends of poles cut bunches of nuts off the palm trees. That can be up to thirty feet above the ground.
“The nuts are similar to large bunches of dates. They’re heavy to lug around. We steam them in huge boilers under pressure. That’s how we get the oil out. It’s the most productive plant nut in the world. One third of the weight of palm nuts is oil. For olives you get one fifth.”
Maric was impressed. The problem for palm oil now was the growing movement to save the rain forest. And save creatures like the orang-utan that lived in it.
Dick’s plantation was on tribal land. It had been slashed and burned for crops for generations. It hadn’t been rain forest. for generations, but he still felt the backlash of negative sentiment.
Borneo wasn’t one vast stretch of virgin rain forest. In fact little of that remained. The bulk of it was land the villagers slashed and burned in an eight-year cycle. The forest grew fast, and it only took a few years before there were tall trees a foot through. Then the area was cleared again, and planted in hill rice, corn and root crops.
The tops of the hills were always left, since that was where the best fruiting trees grew. Everything else, though, was regularly slashed and burned. It was a yearly event that created major smoke hazards across South-east Asia in the burning season.
The convoy turned inland after an hour, and climbed through rolling hills and scattered farmland. Then it dropped into the tropical rain forest of the interior, and picked up the Kapuas River again. The road remained tar sealed, but now a few potholes started to break through.
Dick snorted contemptuously when Maric asked him about the roads.
“It was supposed to have had a foot of gravel under it, but the money for that went into the back pockets of the politicians. The road crews tar sealed straight over red dirt and clay.
“It was done again last year. This time they dropped gravel into the bog holes before grading over them. Then they tar sealed the improvements.”
He snorted again.
“It won’t last long.”
They hit Sanggau at dusk, and pulled in to a house on stilts down one of the back streets. It was built over a dry watercourse. Either a stream when it rained, or part of the Kapuas when it backed up.
“Selamat datang, selamat datang. Datang di dalam!” chorused around them as numerous Dayaks spilled out of the house. There was a lot of body contact as the Dayaks in the vehicles caught up with family members from the house. It was one of the few times Maric saw Dayaks being so openly affectionate.
Perhaps that had more to do with being reserved when foreigners were around. He wondered for a moment how much the strong missionary influence in the early 1900s had curtailed their natural tendencies.
“Food’s ready,” said Dick. “They say you’re very welcome, and do come inside and eat.”
Maric piled his plate with greens, rice and the local version of fried chicken. He’d learned to trust these things during his time in Kalimantan. Though as Dick had warned, the rice packed down into a bit of a log jam in the gut.
Nothing had moved in that department for Maric since they’d arrived, and he suspected it was the same for the rest of the team.
Dick prescribed a plate of small red and green fruit for the rice problem, and Maric passed them around the team. He explained what they were for. The fruit looked and tasted a bit like guavas.
