Assignment - Sulu Sea Read online

  chapter one

  HOLCOMB did not know how long he had been running or when the sun came up, or when he fell at last in the sandy debris of coconut husks and rotting palm fronds. He was afraid of the light. The screeching of the birds and the grunting of a wild pig somewhere in the vine-shrouded wilderness beyond the beach terrified him. He knew he was being followed. The sounds of the birds and monkeys and pigs mingled with the sigh and crash of the surf of the Celebes Sea on the beach. There was a kind of madness in the noise that balanced the gibbering in the lurking shadows of his brain.

  He made himself roll over and stared at the morning sky through the palm fronds overhead. The sun was massive, red, swollen, as if it had gorged on something. Like the red ball of the Jap battle flags on a beach like this, Holcomb thought, on an island like this, in this same Pacific so very long ago. Maybe everything was a dream, a reflection of the barrage and the Jap kamikazes screaming down over the beach. Maybe he had dreamed the twenty years in between, and here he was, back again in the reality of war. But he knew it was no dream. The war was long over. There were no Japanese hiding just inside the line of trees that leaned out over the littered beach. All that was twenty years ago. And yet—

  “Get up,” he said aloud. “Get up, stupid.”

  His voice frightened him. It seemed louder than the crazy screeching of the birds, the chattering of the monkeys. A smell of ozone filled the air. There were huge combers, long, white, regular, rolling out of that shallow tropic sea, out of that giant, swollen red crab of a sun. The light blinded him. He wanted to weep. He got to his feet and reeled and fell and looked back along the beach.

  “Oh, you stupid bastard,” he said.

  He had left his footprints there in the virgin sand, reaching back as far as he could see in the misty dawn light. Back to where the row of dead men lay, those fresh young men, those surprised faces, all laid out so neatly, each one with a bullet in the nape of the neck, tearing away vertebra and spinal cord and snapping, with a single blow, the slender, precious thread of life. All those innocent faces, in such a neat row—!

  “Move, stupid,” he told himself.

  He could not remember when he had eaten last, and he looked around for a fallen coconut, but when he found one he did not know how to crack the massive husk that hid the meat, and after he spent some precious minutes smashing it, with little effect, against the bole of a palm tree, he heaved it away with a curse and gave up all thought of breakfast.

  He ran a little and walked a little. He went through the very edge of the surf, feeling clever now, letting the sea Wash away his footprints. The ocean was tepid. The heat was building up fast. Of course, they would know he hadn’t struck inland, into that tangle of jungle and mountain. They‘d dog him along the beach, coming in a jeep, perhaps, or in a boat along the outer reef, watching for him with binoculars as he reeled and staggered and flapped his arms like a crazy scarecrow on a crazy beach, drowned in the heat of a crazy Pacific island.

  He had no idea of the name of the place, but he knew those mountains, floating in violet haze far, far over the horizon, were on the mainland of Borneo. Sabah? Brunei? The skipper had been surprised, sure enough. Had they gone ten miles or fifty, off course? He knew this was the Tarakuta Group, half submerged in the shallows between the Sulu and the Celebes Seas, a forgotten cluster of tropical mud heaps off the Borneo coast, beloved only by the Dyak aborigines in the mountains, the Hakka Chinese who worked the tin sluice mines, and the Dutch and English colonists who had taken over the old Sultanate of Pandakan, capital city of the Tarakutas. All right. So he had to be on one of the Tarakuta Islands, somewhere off that distant, troubled coast of Borneo. But there were hundreds, maybe a thousand of them. No one really knew. They came and went, some of them, in the leaden sea.

  Come on, keep walking, keep—

  He was suddenly tumbled over by a comber, because he had strayed too far from the foamy edge of the surf where little crabs scuttled out of his way, and this comber had smashed at him out of the blue. It grabbed his legs and tried to suck him out where the water was deep and he would quietly drown.

  Well, what was so bad about drowning?

  For that matter, What was so bad about a quiet execution, a single shot in the back of the neck to blow all your years into darkness? But they were only boys, Holcomb, and you were only a boy when you were a Marine and fought the laps around here, pushing them off? Borneo. You’re middle-aged now, you’re partly bald and in your middle forties, and you just don’t have it any more. If you try to run too long, something is just going to snap and break in your chest, and that will be the end of it.

  Well, he wouldn’t mind that, either. He began to giggle, thinking that if they ever found him, they’d call him the original wild man of Borneo.

  There was just one thing about it all.

  Somebody had to know the truth. Somebody had to be told what had happened to those young boys and the skipper and that beautiful prize package of a boat, the new 727.

  Somebody had to be warned.

  “What happened?” Holcomb asked aloud. “How did they do it?”

  He didn’t know. None of them had known. Before they knew what it was all about, what kind of jam they were in, it was too late. And the boys went down like a row of dominoes, ka-pow! ka-pow! ka-pow! as fast as the executioner could walk along behind them as they stood with their ankles and wrists tied, and wondered if it could really be happening to them.

  He felt exhausted. The sun was hot now. He was surprised to see how high it had climbed in the sky. Ah, the South Sea idyll, the rows of coconuts, the gentle breeze, the surf, the blue Pacific! It stank. The vegetation was rotten and the sea threw up, lite vomit, the dead bits and pieces of fish and crab flat the sea scavengers had missed. And they never told you about the noise of the birds and the monkeys and the crash, crash, crash of the surf. Enough to drive a man crazy.

  He fell down and lay with his face in the wet sand. The sea washed o'el' his leg, sighed away, washed in again. He wanted to sleep. But every time he thought of the neat row of dead boys’ faces, he wanted to cry. Boys from Iowa, or Philly; boys from Boston and Atlanta. Kids, all of them. They had regarded him as an old man. But he was only forty-seven. He didn’t wear a uniform, either. Maybe that’s why he had felt a little apart from them. They knew he was O.N.I. Maybe they snickered about it. What, they must have asked, was he looking for? Spies and Reds in the torpedo tubes? In the nuclear engine room? Uncle Sam didn’t mind Wasting money, sending all those technicians around the world on a joy ride.

  Except that they hadn’t gotten around the world. From San Diego they had gone to Honolulu and then come arching down across the big, wide, beautiful blue Pacific, and then they had headed through the little independent sultanate of the Tarakuta Archipelago, off Borneo. Yesterday they surfaced and—and—

  “Get up, Pete,” he told himself. “Please get up, or they’ll catch you. They know you’re missing now. They’ll come after you like bats out of hell.”

  If this had been left to some Beverly Hills scenarist, Holcomb thought. he’d have been rescued by now by a bevy of smiling, pearly-toothed, gorgeous-breasted and scantily clad Polynesian beauties, all just dying to slip into the bush with the great white stranger and heal his wounds with love.

  But he hadn’t even seen the proverbial Borneo wild man; since ten o’clock last night, he hadn’t seen a soul. Nothing but these damned birds and monkeys and pigs grunting and gulls screaming and the surf hammering . . .

  A shadow fell upon him.

  He had known fear at times, in his life, but never anything like the terror that seized his heart and squeezed the breath out of him with one giant Wallop. He wanted to burrow into the sand and vanish. He
wanted to snap his fingers and suddenly just not be here. But this was not the place or the age for miracles.

  A toe prodded him, and it touched him just where his rib had been cracked or broken—he didn’t know which—when he climbed over the palisade to escape last night. He heard a scream of pain and knew it came from his throat and could not believe it. When he rolled over, his hand closed convulsively on a smooth piece of driftwood. He felt its weight and licked his lips in cunning.

  All right, he thought.

  He looked up.

  This was no man Friday for a castaway Robinson Crusoe, he decided. The shadow of the man blotted out the hot morning sun. It even blotted out the screeching of the birds and the thunder of the surf. It looked black and enormous against the cobalt blue of the Celebes sky.

  “You hurt, man?”

  English, yet, Holcomb thought. He digs me, man.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m hurt.”

  “You look funny. Where you from, man?”

  “The Jackson.”

  “What?”

  “The United States nuclear submarine Andrew Jackson, you dig?‘ Holcomb And with a great effort and a lurch, he lunged to his feet and swung the driftwood club at the black shadow looming over him.

  At the moment, he saw the look of utter surprise and consternation on the black man’s face, under the broad brim of woven straw hat. The man wore old blue denims, faded white salt and sun, straw sandals, and a dazzling whlte, clean skivvy shirt. He saw with horror that there was standard U.S.N. stenciling on the skivvy shirt, Somebody J,K. MM2/c— and then his club crunched down on the man’s skull while, at the same moment in complete reflex, the stranger swung his machete.

  Holcomb hadn’t seen the knife at all.

  He felt the Jolt on his wrist and arm as the heavy driftwood smashed through flesh and bone and cartilage; and at the same moment, as if it happened to someone else, he felt the thunk! of the razor-sharp coconut knife cut his flesh, cut through his shoulder and muscle, hissing like a butcher’s blade. He staggered, fell to one knee, saw blood gout to the sand in a great, rich splash, soaking in and turning black almost at once. The world reeled and tumbled around inside head. He heard a groan and a great screeching of the birds in the nearby jungle and the man in blue denims began to cry out something in a language he could not understand. Maybe nobody would understand it, ever, because he was bleeding from nose and ear and mouth, thick, viscous blood that looked mortal, and there were funny little spasmodic kicks and twitches to his legs as he lay on his back on the sand.

  Holcomb forced himself to stand erect. The beach swayed and reeled under him. He staggered, caught himself.

  “Any more of you out there?” he shouted. "Come on, come on, let’s have it now!”

  His voice was a hysterical cry in the wilderness of sun and sea. He looked down at the big black man. The machete was bloody on the sand. He picked it up. He looked at his left shoulder and shuddered. He could see where the blade had sliced right through the meat of muscle and tendon to the white, shiny, gristly bone. It was hard to believe he was looking at his own tender, precious flesh. He was bleeding badly, and he became frightened by it, wondering how much blood he could lose before he fainted.

  “Hey, man,” he said to the stranger he had felled.

  The black man groaned and muttered in his own language.

  “Hey, man, didn’t they send you after me?" Holcomb asked.

  The other's legs twitched and were still.

  “You dead?” Holcomb asked.

  The black man said, very clearly and distinctly: “Yes, you killed me, stupid, and I only stopped by to help you.”

  But his mouth didn’t move when he said it.

  Terror seized Holcomb and he ran down the beach. Help me, help me, God help us all, he thought. He flung away the driftwood club. He thought of going back to get the machete, but he was afraid the dead man might talk to him again, and he couldn’t stand that, because he knew he had made another error, and he might have had help and spread alarm and rescued those who weren’t already lying back there with their surprised young faces upturned like flowers to the tropical sun. And the ship—yes, the ship—how could it have happened? Trapped there, incredibly, even Captain Hardnose Johnson, that tough old sea eagle, couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe it had happened even when that fat Chinese put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger—

  Holcomb tripped and sprawled and landed on his wounded shoulder and gave a screech of utter, mortal pain that echoed louder than the surf and the birds. He fell in water, and choked and floundered and knew he was drowning. He hadn’t even noticed the water ahead of him as he ran.

  Strong hands caught his ankle and hauled him without ceremony out of the warm, salt lagoon. Holcomb wasn’t sure if he were dreaming or not.

  A tall blonde girl, naked to her rich, creamy golden skin, with eyes as blue as the Pacific sky, stood over him.

  She was silent, and he saw by her face that he was dying.

  He tried to speak. but nothing happened.

  “Are you American?" the girl asked in English.

  He tried to nod. He coughed and choked on salt water. He saw that the girl wasn’t really naked. She wore the most vestigial bikini he had ever seen, of a pale flesh color that was lost against the rich Polynesian gold of her skin. She swung an oxygen tank and skin-diving flippers in one long, delicate hand. She was the most beautiful, the most unbelievable creature he had ever seen.

  He began to weep, because he was dying.

  “Simon?”

  “My mate. I mean, for the Tarakuta." She gestured toward the lagoon. Holcomb looked and saw an old two-masted freighting schooner at anchor offshore. A dinghy was drawn up on the beach. He saw that the landscape had changed from the wilderness of the coast where he had awakened at sunrise to a more hilly shore. The lagoon was enclosed by mangroves that dug gnarled, rooty fingers into a milky sea. The distant loom of Borneo’s mountain spines could not be seen now. “Didn’t Simon pass you on the beach, mister?"

  “I killed him,” Holcomb whispered, suddenly stricken. “He swung at me with his machete. and I thought—I thought—”

  “What? What are you saying? I sent him for some fresh coconuts, that’s all. Listen, are you crazy? I can’t help you unless Simon . . .”

  “Please,” he wept.

  “Have you got a name?”

  “Lieutenant Commander Peter J. Holcomb, Office of Naval Intelligence, on temporary duty aboard the U.S. Navy nuclear-powered Polaris sub 727, the Andrew Jackson. Understand?”

  “No.” She looked down at him, frowning, and then knelt and looked at his shoulder. She could not conceal her repugnance at his wound. “Listen, you’re in a bad way. The sun’s got you, and you’ve been hurt like I’ve never seen a man hurt before. Who broke all your fingers?”

  “My fingers?” He had forgotten. His hand was numb. “The Chinaman did it.”

  “Commander, you don’t make sense.”

  “Listen.” Holcomb felt as if something had suddenly torn apart in his chest. “Listen, if you can’t get me to a doctor in time—can you hear me—?”

  “Yes,” the girl said.

  “You get in touch with-—a man named—a man—"

  “Who?”

  “Sam Durell. I saw him in Honolulu—three weeks ago. He‘s still there. It’s urgent. Tell him about me—”

  “Hey, it’s a small world,” the girl whispered. “Durell?”

  “Yes. Please? It must be—quick. Couple of days, they'll all be dead. Understand?”

  “Who will be dead?”

  “Whole crew. One by one. Ship, too. Gone. Not a trace. Vanished. You understand?”

  “No, but—”

  Holcomb felt something else give way deep inside him, a quiet release, a warm flood that he almost welcomed. He saw the sun shining behind the girl’s thick, blonde hair. She had tied and pinned it up in a knot at the nape of her neck and allowed the long‘, heavy, thick and luscious strands of it to
curl forward over her shoulders and lie between her firm breasts. He was sorry he Was dying. He wondered if she understood his message at all.

  And just before he died, he wondered if it all hadn’t been some kind of dream and delusion, a nightmare of sun and terror.

  chapter two

  DURELL found her on the lanai of his apartment in the Luakulani Palms that overlooked the dark sand beach and Makapuu Point. Against a background of jacaranda and African tulip trees, through which the waters of Kaiwi Channel glimmered, she took a seat in the big Bombay chair and poured herself a gin and orange hitters. She turned to watch the professional, brown-skinned beach boys giving the tourist girls a thrill with the surfboards, out there where the Pacific combers came rolling in like the massive ticking of some giant clock. He could hear the shrieks of delighted terror from the beginners on their styrofoam boards and see their brave young shapes, glowing with golden health, against the towering white clouds of the Pacific horizon.

  It was a Tuesday, and he was already half packed and ready to return via this evening’s Pan Am flight to the mainland and then on across to his apartment in Washington’s Northwest by Rock Creek Park, where he would report to K Section and finish the routine job of organizational field work he had done here. He knew that General McFee had assigned him to it as a vacation of sorts, but he was not pleased with it, because desk work irritated him, even when he could admit the importance of analysis and synthesis of every item of knowledge that came through the pipeline and military installations and divisional movements deep in the heart of Red China. Back at No. 20 Annapolis Street in Washington, the computer would digest the coded information and estimates of tomorrow’s potential trouble spot in a very troubled world.

  He halted in the doorway and the girl on the lanai tilted her gin and orange bitters and sipped at it through the straw and said, “Hi,” and then regarded him with cool and speculative blue eyes that were distinctly unfriendly. “So you are Sam Durell?”

  “I am," he said quietly.

  “It’s a cinch you’re no native.”

  “Because I don’t wear my shirttail out?”