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decreaseHarry Tranton was a lanky black man with a gold Montagnard bracelet, a gold Rolex and a tatoo that read Eat Shit! on his left shoulder. Harry was a veteran of the Special Forces like Harwich and Dee; he had fought in Laos and spoke Lao, H'mong, Thai and other dialects helpful in the karst hills of opium poppies, warlords and ever-shifting allegiancies. He ate the food, adopted the customs, married a Vientiane woman and did a stint as a Buddhist monk. The US Army had informed Sgt. Tranton that when his latest tour of duty was completed in Laos, he'd be going on to West Germany. Harry in turn informed the US Army that unless he could remain in Indochina, he'd be going civvie at the end of his hitch. The army said West Germany. He discreetly told them to fuck off, dropped out and joined Air America, the CIA's charter airline that featured the weirdest and wildest cargo runs performed by the craziest, most talented pilots, kickers, gunners and mechanics in Southeast Asia. Harry fit in and did a little buit of everything until '75, when Laos was falling to the Commies. Then he got his wife out of Vientiane along with his newborn child and settled in Bangkok. Like Dee, he had gravitated to Patpong and The Hot LZ. Unlike Dee, all he could do was look at the lovely Thai girls dancing a-go-go in the bar--if he touched, his wife Gai would enable him to challenge Michael Jackson's singing career via a rusty opium knife. Harry had known Harwich during the war and he'd known Rickshaw, Rollie and Dee since the same time period. When Harwich had returned, Harry had been instrumental in helping him get the gang into Laos and back into Thailand. He too was well-rewarded for his efforts. And like the others, he was happy to help Harwich out both in Singapore and now this voyage to Zamboanga. Gai was another story but he'd deal with his missus when they got back to Bangkok which hopefully wouldn't be for a couple weeks yet.
"Judgin' from the looks on Dee's face, you lads must be raggin' him about his aerobics session in the fuckin' elevator with that sheila Toy, eh?" asked the fifth and final member of Harwich's impromptu crew, Tossie McGillicutty.
Tossie was also a vet but as a member of the Australian SAS. "Tossie" was a play on his initials T.O.S. but it was based largely on the fact that he had been seized by a bout of uncontrollable puking seconds before his team unleashed an ambush on thirty NVA troops. His puking had startled the North Vietnamese soldiers and made what could have been a total balls-up a successful ambush. The name stuck on him as he fought in the 'Nam and later kicked around Southeast Asia. Tossie's mum had keeled over in Australia in the late '70s, leaving him extensive funds which kept him in Singha beer, Mekhong whiskey and Thai bargirls when he came to roost in Bangkok at The Hot LZ.
Tossie had come down to Singapore because he had known Seth Trent in Saigon when the man's name had still been Oscar Taggart. Trent duped Tossie into getting him an Australian transport aircraft to use for shipping illicit cargo out of Saigon. As a result, a planeload of Vietnamese dependents had been left behind when the city fell to the NVA. Tossie had been paid $10,000.00 US and told if he ever spoke out about what he'd done for Trent, word would get back to Australian authorities about Tossie "borrowing" the transport. Trent had used this threat for years to get "help" from Tossie.
When Harwich had gone to Koh Samui, Tossie had told Trent where the American was staying on the island.
Racked with guilt, Tossie had tried to explain to Dee what he'd done but Dee had been too busy hurrying off to see Toy to listen. By the time Tossie did get the chance to tell him, Harwich was in deepkimchi with Trent. Pissed off, Dee had dragged the Aussie with him down to Songkhla to help rescue Harwich. When that hadn't been possible, and they'd rescued him in Singapore, Harwich and Tossie had had a long discussion in Harwich's hotel room at Raffles where the American absolved Tossie of any guilt. Tossie had been relieved--he had felt like water buffalo shit for getting Harwich into a jam with Trent. It was great to be his old happy self again, although that part of him really hadn't gone away on the trek from Bangkok to Singapore. Tossie just couldn't be Tossie if he wasn't guzzling beer, belching, farting, cracking wise or chasing Asian skirts. Doom and gloom had never been his style. He thought the potentially dangerous trip to Zamboanga aboard Harwich's junk to deliver a Triad leader's "junk" was a lark. Then, too, he'd missed the Lao treasure mission and got mostly financially screwed with the Cambodian one. So, unlike the others, he could use an extra $10,000.00 US to supplement his monthly inheritance checks.
"Why the fuck ain't you at the wheel, Tossie?" Dee exploded.
Tossie smiled and swallowed the last of his Tiger beer, heaving the empty overboard. "No worries, Dee. This thing practically sails herself. I've got her on autopilot."
Dee rolled his eyes. "This is bababobo." Bababobo is Thai for loony-tunes. "None of us is a sailor, we're runnin' goods for a Triad asshole, we don't have more'n a Swiss Army knife among us and now our 'helmsman' is telling us the junk sails itself."
"It does, Dee," Tossie insisted. "And I've had some experience at sea. Sailed from Java to Darwin, I did. Learned quite a bit, that is, when I wasn't boffin' the skipper's Balinese girlfriend or drinking up his booze."
Harwich, Rollie and Harry joined in with Tossie's laughter. It had the potential to be a bullshit story but these were men who lived for that kind of entertainment.
"Won't be so rat-fuckin' funny when we run into a typhoon and yer half-shitfaced, McGillicutty."
"In that unlikely event, Master Bates, I'll be sure to fuckin' well barf all over your ugly face." This was punctuated with a universally understood finger gesture.
"Dee, what's with you?" Harwich asked. "I know this trip came up suddenly but when we agreed to come out here, you agreed too. No one twisted your wrist."
Dee looked out to sea, not answering.
"Ah, he's just sore--in more ways than one--that we're getting on his case about Toy," Tossie loudly stage-whispered.
Judging from the way Dee's shoulders suddenly stiffened, it appeared Tossie had been accurate, if not subtle, in hitting the nail on the head.
"Tossie's right," Rollie said, noting with mean satisfaction that Dee's shoulders got even stiffer with this comment, "but Dee did bring up some good points, guys."
Harwich fished a bottle of Tiger out of a cooler Tossie had specifically purchased in Singapore for that very purpose and opened it up with a church key built into the cooler. Tossie had bought the cooler based largely on that helpful feature; he took his beer very seriously. Harwich passed out beers to everyone.
"Okay, Rollie, let's run those points down and see what we can come up with to improve things," Harwich said agreeably. After what these four men had risked to rescue him, he was damned if he'd get them hurt or killed through ineptitude just so he could do a vision quest voyage.
"Well, like Dee said, we ain't sailors--other than Tossie, maybe," and the way he said that left no doubt in anyone's mind that he hadn't bought the Aussie's story for a second. "I mean, you're from Cape Cod, John, but--"
Now it was Harwich's turn toget cranky. "What is it with you people? Do you automatically assume everyone from Cape Cod is an experienced sailor?"
Harry smiled at him, shrugging. "Well, John, of everybody aboard this crate, you would seem the most likely seaman here. After all, I'm from Detroit and after doing tours in landlocked Laos, I've spent most of my life in Bangkok. My main sailing skills are with a T-10 parachute and my water skills are navigating the soi during flood season in Bangkok. Rollie's from Illinois, Dee's from Pittsburgh and Tossie don't know shit from Shinola." General laughter at this, including Tossie's. "So that leaves you, amigo. Cape Cod--y' know, the Mayflower, Nantucket whalers, Kennedy with PT 109, etc, etc. You grew up on the Atlantic, dude. Bad-ass ocean, I hear."
"That doesn't mean I know everything about sailing boats!" Harwich yelled defensively, then realized how that statement might sound and backpedaled. "It doesn't mean I know nothing, either. Hell, I got this junk out of the lagoon on Koh Dum and halfway to Singapore on my own."
"Junk's a good name for this effen Lincoln log," Dee muttered. Everyone laughed at that.
"So what are you guys telling me? That you can't learn, that you can't adapt? We've got nautical charts, we've got fuel, we've got food."
"We don't got guns," Dee grumbled.
"No, Dee, we don't, so what do you suggest?"
Dee scratched his goatee. "Actually, Johnny, I've got an idea."
"Let's hear it."
"Well, we were plannnin' on puttin' into Kuching to refuel and take on food supplies, right?"
Kuching was one of the main cities along the coast of the East Malaysian province of Sarawak on the northwestern side of Borneo. Using the maps, Harwich had decided Kuching would be a good spot to stop. Tossie had seconded this decision.
"Yeah, that's right. And..?"
"There's a place I know of just before ya hit Kuching. It's along the coast. Never been there myself but I've heard about it a couple times from guys in the bar."
"Do you mean what I think you mean?" Harry asked, exchanging looks with Rollie and both men shook their heads, whistling.
"What, what is it?" Harwich asked, not liking what he was seeing.
Tossie's eyes lit up with understanding and he snapped his fingers. "Of course! The Real McCoy, right?"
"Bingo," Dee replied. For the first time since he had started getting razzed about Toy, he was smiling.
"Would someone care to tell me what the hell you people are talking about?"
Harry smiled at Harwich. "Never heard of The Real McCoy, huh?"
"Do I look or sound like I have?"
"Good point. Well, John, it's like this: The Real McCoy is a waterfront bar, marine repair shop and whorehouse rolled into one. It's straight out of a bad Western. Some real heavy hitters loiter in the joint."
"It's run by a Mick named Feargal Connolly who's brother-in-law was a McCoy back in Dublin, hence the so-cute-I'll-fuckin'-puke name," Dee said, picking up the explanation. "Ya got pirates there, gunrunners, smugglers, headhunters, mercs, jerks, alkies, druggies, Thuggies--ya name it and if it has to do with bein' a bad-ass, it's at The Real McCoy. Malays, Indonesians, Filipinos, Thai, Arabs, Iranians, farang from every-fuckin'-where--and women to match."
"Sounds almost as charming as Koh Dum, Dee, but what does it do for us?"
"We can top off our tanks there, probably get food and even a little nookie for those of us so inclined--"
"Unless your willy's hurtin'," Tossie stage-whispered.
"Ya wait tillwe get there, Crocodile Dungheap, an' we'll see whose willy is hurtin'."
"Dee, we can get the first two items in Kuching and possibly the third," although I'm not interested in that at the moment, Harwich thought, thinking of making love to Connie on this very junk two days earlier, "so why stop at this Real McCoy place?"
" 'cause we can get guns at Connolly's joint. Look, John, we're gonna be sailin' through some nasty turf between here and Zamboanga, especially in the Sulu Archipelago. I ain't too fuckin' thrilled about doin' that armed with no more'n some axes and Tossie's belchin'. Are you?"
"No, I'm not," Harwich admitted. Diana Parkes had gotten legal ownership of her brother's junk but not the guns that Oscar Taggart had carried onboard. The Singapore Marine Police had confiscated Taggart's shotguns, M-16s, a Browning Hi-Power and his Smith & Wesson Model 29, as well as the AKM, MAC-10 Ingram and Colt .45 automatic Harwich had swiped from the arms bunker on Koh Dum.
"Then you can see why I wanna stop there. And there's something else."
"Such as?"
"Such as we should be able to find someone who can help us navigate this tub to Zambo. A real sailor, somebody who knows these waters. Not a bunch of landlubbers like us. Mind ya, we're the best goddamn landlubbers to set foot on this wreck but still..."
"You think we can get guns and a decent sailor in a place like The Real McCoy? And without getting our throats sliced open?"
"It's a possibility," Rollie said, sipping at his beer.
"Which? Getting what we want or getting killed?"
"Both," Dee boomed. "It's half the fun of the place."
"I think I had enough of that kind of fun on Koh Dum and Singapore."
Harry sighed. "I hear ya, John, but I think Dee's right about this, much as it kills me to have to say that in public. We need guns and we need someone at the wheel that knows what the hell he's doin'. Besides, The Real McCoy might be one o' those dumps that's overrated like, y' know, what's that cesspool called in Bangkok? Oh, yeah, The Hot LZ."
"Up yers, dickhead," Dee shot back, grinning.
"Speaking of being at the wheel, I suppose I better get back to ours." Tossie got himself another Tiger before returning to the helm.
"It won't be as bad as you might think, John," Rollie said. "And after seeing what it's like in the Sulu Sea when me and Dee were on Tawi-Tawi, I think firepower is a good, good idea. First there's al-Queda who obviously is our Numbah One problem but then you've got other Muslim factions who want to make the southern Philippines an independent Islamic country. Sailing a boat full of American men through there unarmed would be a great fucking way to commit suicide."
"Yeah," Dee chimed in, "it's Anarchy City down there. Sure, ya got the Flipino Army and the Philippines National Police--the PNP--and now some of our boys are there since 9/11 but in a place like that, it's a joke."
"That bad, huh?"
"Fuckin'-A, pal."
"Okay, then, why did you guys agree to come along if it's so bad?"
" 'cause yer our friend, asshole, and when we saw how determined ya were to sail this junk to Zambo, we knew we couldn't let ya do it alone. No goddamn way. I just hope that ya ain't doin' this 'cause that bitch goaded yer ass into it."
"Who, Diana Parkes? No, she pissed me off but I did thid because I thought it was a kind of poetic justice that I'd get this boat when its last owner was a scumbag who tried so hard to get me killed. She is a piece of work, though, isn't she?"
Harry rolledhis eyes. "You saida mouthful, bro. Diana makes Gai look like Betty Boop!"
Harwich tried to picture Betty Boop with almond eyes, brown skin and swearing in Lao as she chased Harry Tranton around their house. The image made him laugh out loud.
"There's still one more item on my gripe list, Johnny."
"Just one/ That's a world record for you, ain't it, Dee?"
"Hardy-har-har, dickless. No, I think ya know what I'm talkin' about. The guy who's payin' us to transport this cargo to Zamboanga. The Triad."
"Victor Lu. And we don't know he's a Triad."
"What's this 'we' bullshit, kemosabe? Ya told me ya thought he was a 489, a Dragon Head, as soon as ya got off the phone with him."
"Well, he sure spoke that way, naming Yen Ching Kung as a 'competition'. It was a gut feeling but it doesn't automatically mean he runs a secret society."
"Johnny, with the exception o' Tossie, ain't none of us here needs ten gees for sailin' China crap to a Club Dead destination like Zamboanga, especially you. I know yer still POed with the bullshit we went through with Yen's family gettin' from Thailand to Laos an' home again. Is that what this is all about, Johnny?" Dee persisted. "Are ya tryin' to prove something to those cleaver-packin' Chinee up in Hong Kong?"
Harwich was considering how to answer the question to Dee that he wasn't even sure he could answer to himself when he was cut off by Harry.
"Hey, check that out, people," he said, pointing beyond Realia's stern.
The others turned to see what he was pointing at.
It was a ship, an old freighter with foul black smoke vomiting out of a single stack. The freighter was roughly eighty to a hundred feet long and looked none too well for its wear. Paint and rust flakes told their stories, equally poor residents in a bad neighborhood. Men could be seen hustling about on the deck near a pile of containers but they were far too distant for anybody on Realia to make out racial features. All in all, the freighter was an unremarkable scow like hundreds of other bumboats working the Malacca Strait and the South China Sea.
Except for one little thing.
This freighter seemed to be changing course. Coming their way. Following them. And making good speed despite its junkyard dog appearance.
Harwich looked around. The sea of the Strait of Malacca was chock-a-block with all manners of shipping. They weren't alone out here; hardly--this was one of the busiest sea lanes in the whole world. Still, of all the vessels out here, only the freighter seemed interested in the junk. And it was the closest ship to them.
Maybe it meant nothing. Maybe the freighter was going the same way as them. That wouldn't be a novel occurrence here. It just happened to have more power and speed than Realia, that's all.
"I don't like it, Johnny," Dee said. Coming from anyone else, those words would have been melodramatic. Coming from Dee, it was something to think about accordingly.
"Funny, I was thinking the same thing," Harwich remarked. He turned and called to Tossie: "You're the so-called sailor, Toss. What do you make of that freighter?"
Tossie frowned, watching the freighter getting closer to them. "Dunno, mate. Might be he's just overtaking us but if so, he's gonna knock us about with some soddin' wake and that's a fact."
The freighter was close enough for Harwich to start making out faces. They were brown, Southeast Asian. They were looking at Realia and pointing. They seemed animated but not hostile. Maybe it's seeing a traditional Chinese junk with a farang crew, Harwich thought. Maybe...
"Tossie, are we at full speed?"
"Nope, but I can arrange that if you'd like."
"Not yet but be ready. They might just be gawkers." Harwich looked at Rollie and Harry. "Why don't you two go below. I'm probably just being paranoid but if this is some kind of problem, I'd prefer to have a back-up plan."
"And we're it?" Rollie asked. "The element of surprise?"
"Something likethat, yeah."
Both men nodded and went below decks.
The freighter was now abreast of Realia.
The men aboard it were now becoming more animated, their shouts becoming louder. Was it Harwich's imagination or were their shouts becoming mocking jeers?
"Hang on, boys, she's passin' us!" Tossie called.
The freighter went by, pushing a good-sized bow wave before her and then the old tub began a turn to starboard, slowly blocking the junk's path.
Harwich's eyes widened when he saw the flag flying from the helm; it was a Jolly Roger! And below the anachronistic standard were the words Blood Clot painted on the stern.
Sean Bunzick
Copyright 2007
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This most recent of the John Harwich series by Sean Bunzik is still in the process of being published and distributed (we don't even have a pic of the cover for it yet). 'Zero Trust in Zamboanga' purchasing information will follow as soon as we have it for you. We thought you'd all like getting an early preview of it now. We are looking forward to reading a copy as soon as we can get our hands on one. Information is forthcoming.
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