Overland Run - Part 8

Max watched the twenty metre yacht cut through the water towards the tourist launch. Custom built for ocean racing after World War Two she had campaigned successfully for more than a quarter of a century before being sold off as a cruising boat. Changing hands many times, her condition deteriorating accordingly, she was still a handy ocean going boat. Virtually unsinkable on the ocean, fast and stable, her first owner had built her for comfort below decks as well, she would sleep a dozen easily and had a roomy galley.

The mainsail dropped and she came about into the wind, the jib holding her steady. The Thai crew of the smaller boat unceremoniously shoved Max and Harry up onto the deck followed by their bags and several cartons of supplies. All most immediately the yacht was under way again, Louie howling at the crew to get her back under full sail and anxiously scanning the horizon for Thai customs boats. Max went below, deciding to give the bunks a miss for the sail locker, if the sea was calm he could drag a couple of sail bags on deck and sleep. He could hide his bags under the sails and watch incase anyone went down there. Louie was all business now, he had kept the boat at Kompong Som, formally Sihanoukville, in Cambodia; picking her up and skirting Thai territorial waters to pick up Max and Harry from a pre-organised tour boat. Once underway he wasn’t worried about any interference if he kept to international waters, the governments in this region were too touchy for one to risk stopping boats that could be from a neighbour and it wasn’t as if there were drugs on board he thought unsuspectingly.

There was nothing like a good boat running before the wind thought Max, the mainly Philipino crew raised a threadbare spinnaker and the grand old boat leapt forward, her bow wave hissing away from the hull as she headed southwest, turning away from the coast where she would eventually cut back towards Borneo. Pirate country he thought, this fucking mob would feel right at home.

He went back and spelled Louie on the helm, and waited while charts were brought up. He could hear Harry vomiting over the back of the boat, the crew had stopped him going below when they saw the signs of seasickness. “Serve the little fat cunt right” he thought unkindly, “Maybe he’ll lose some weight.” He inspected the charts with Louie, they would keep well clear of Vietnamese waters then head for Northern Borneo going through the narrow strait between Sabah and Palawan into the Sulu sea. The Sulu Sea was once infested with pirates before the Englishman Brooke had driven them from the seas and carved himself a kingdom in Northern Borneo. Those were the days of the great freebooters thought Max, taking what they wanted under the Union Jack and God help the natives if they got in their way. He could have done that he mused, Rajah Max had a good ring to it, a harem of a couple of hundred girls, the best grub and booze brought in from Europe, those were the days. Now the pirates and the pirate hunters wore suits and ties and worked out of multi storied office buildings.

A quick check below had revealed the presence of half a dozen AK47s, a box of grenades and something that looked like a .50 calibre machine gun, the results of Louie’s Cambodian shopping trip. God help any fishermen who decided to supplement their income with a little piracy he thought. He breathed a sigh of relief that Harry would be incapable of shooting at seagulls with the big banger for a few days, but once his stomach settled Max would get Louie to remove a few crucial parts from the weaponry and put the grenades under lock and key. He had once been on a fishing trip with Harry off Sydney Heads when he produced grenades and started dropping them over the side instructing Max to get a net and scoop up the stunned fish. Removing a pin from one he had dropped it and the evil black shape had rolled under the gunnels causing them both to abandon ship in considerable haste and swim furiously away from the boat before it disintegrated. Large toothy creatures had appeared on the scene just as a police launch arrived and plucked them from the water. Glory days.

The plan was to head for Subic Bay where an Angeles City bar owner had arranged to have them brought ashore by fishing boat. Philipino immigration stamps were being purchased that would pass at a casual glance and Charlie would be unaware of their imminent arrival. The boat was headed due east by this stage a spanking North Westerly wind driving them up to twelve knots. The wind was steady and would last for days and Max decided to sleep for a few hours then cook for the crew before taking the helm for the night watch. Steering a good boat at speed under a cloudless tropical night sky was as close to sex with a beautiful girl that loved you as it got. Waking around dark he lit the stove and began opening tins of stewed beef, putting a pot of water on to boil for the noodles. Tinned tomatoes went in with the stew and chopped fresh onions. After the noodles were cooked he stirred the heated meat mixture into it and tipped a packet of grated cheese into a separate bowl, sliced a couple of loaves of the fresh bread brought that day and called the men to eat. As always when he cooked he wasn’t hungry himself, he would eat a sandwich in the night when one of the crew came on deck to relieve himself letting the man take the helm for ten minutes. Harry had recovered a little and assisted Louie in disposing of the food while the Philipinos mixed it with the rice they had cooked during the day, squatting on the deck and talking to Max in Pinoy English with a sprinkling of Tagalog and Vasayan. He held the boat on course, watching the compass and looking over his shoulder occasionally to make sure the boats wake was a perfect straight line. The crew started to go below to sleep and the full moon came up out of the sea and Max was at peace with himself.

Six days later they were in Philippine waters, the wind had a lot more north in it now forcing them due East, they would tack when they sighted Panay Island and run North West to Mindoro and back into the South China Sea, keeping well clear of Manila Bay before tacking East back into Subic Bay. A bored Harry had shown them the chart at one stage, they could have run straight through the middle of the South China Sea and saved several days. Max had shrugged but Louie pointed to what looked like fly specks on the map, “Spratly Islands” he grunted, “at least four countries warships there all the time, watching no one tries to land on them” “Oil rich” he said, “Everybody wants them”.

Subic bay is one of the worlds best harbours; during the Vietnam War you could have walked across it on the decks of aircraft carriers, battleships and the other shipping that that was vital to the conduct of a war. As they entered it Max saw the lights of a solitary cargo ship anchored about a mile off shore. It had been there a year ago too so he decided it wasn’t going anywhere. A light flashed several times nearby, it was Bill, a former Queensland prawn trawler skipper, now the owner of Bill’s Bar in the middle of the Angeles City bright lights. As the yacht slowed to a stop he brought his cabin cruiser along side. Luggage organised they climbed down to the smaller boat, not even the slightest swell disrupting their transfer. Charlie Gilmour welcomed them exuberantly.

Harry shot a look at Bill that would have disabled less men; the brawny former prawn boat skipper rolled his eyes at Max and shrugged at Harry. “Got the word you were coming” Charlie cried, “everything’s organised, you’re staying with me, and I’ve got a good house lined up for you to buy if you’re moving up here” he said to Harry who feigned deafness.

Charlie immediately tried to get Max onside, realising that none of them would stay with him, his house keeping was less than impeccable due to his habit of trying to give his girlfriends respectability by paying them to take care of the house. An eighteen year old bargirl from a hillside squatters town trying to run a household full of gadgets she had never heard of. They stayed in bed watching TV till Charlie threw them out, then changed houses with the irate landlord keeping his deposit bond.
When they walked up the beach to the car Max got in the front seat, only wanting a freshwater shower, and for the first time in more than a week, a drink. Charlie was as bad as Harry when it came to the grog, Max had spent too many nights in the Angeles’s bars watching him drink nothing but bottled water. They drove quickly through the former port town of Subic Bay, once sharing the honours of Americas principal Pacific navel port with San Diego and Pearl Harbour. Once every street had been lined with bars and the footpaths crowded with sailors and their bargirl conquests; now a few deceptively quiet bars and half a dozen resort hotels along the beach were all that remained.

Charlie went to turn into the Blue Rock Resort, the more exclusive of the hotels, no doubt determined to show the clientele that he still had friends but Max waved him on, pointing north to Angeles City, he wanted a drink and he wanted to get laid. The drive took about an hour, Max hated driving with Charlie, who showed off his police academy driving skills on every occasion, over taking lines of traffic then narrowly avoiding disaster from oncoming cars by forcing his way back onto his side of the road. He never doubted that Charlie could drive but he had serious doubts about the abilities of the Philipino drivers sharing the road. They sped through the narrow track cut through the lahar; the volcanic ash from Mount Pinatubo that had turned to mud overnight and concreted entire villages into history. The lights of Clarke Airbase appeared on the horizon and they crossed over a narrow bridge into Angeles, aptly named city of the angels, and Max waved Charlie in to a Boundary Road hotel owned by a former Sydney criminal reputed to have cut the toes from some of the perpetrators of Australia’s largest armed robbery with bolt cutters then fleeing to the Philippines with their reluctantly given up share of the job. Charlie fled after dropping them off, the old gunman’s intolerance of ex-coppers, Charlie in particular, was legendary so Max organised rooms, deposited his bags in one of the securest hotel lock ups in Asia, and proceeded to wash the salt off.

The receptionist, Colt, named by her father after his favourite tipple, had had her eye on Max for a long time, but Max never wasted time on good girls, too much trouble lay there; families, fathers, payment for lost virginity- he was in a Catholic country now and would conduct himself accordingly. He waited in the restaurant for Harry, the first beer of the evening lasting about two swallows, the hotel also included a small nightclub where the go-go dancers supplemented their incomes with customers in the hotel rooms. Max had known guys who had come there for a holiday and never left the pub, working their way through the dancers by night and spending their days around the grimy pool. There was even a weight room for anyone nostalgic for their prison days. Seeing Harry arrive he quickly ordered another beer for himself, he wanted to get things straight about Charlie, who would be waiting anxiously out the front of the hotel to take them to the town, before they set out. “It’s probably easier to let the cunt talk himself out of it” decided Harry, “ he’ll have something to sell or barter to make up for any money he’s done”. Max didn’t doubt it, Charlie always had some thing in reserve for the next deal. Once he had shown Max a warehouse full of designer brand children’s clothes, overruns and faulty stock, normally millions of dollars worth on the retail market available for less than a dollar an item. Inquiries showed that the licensed retailers knew all about them and would block any attempt to sell them in a first world market. A bulk sales merchant in Australia finally took them after Charlie had the labels cut off, then defaulted on the majority of the payment. Story of Charlie’s business career.

They met him in front of the hotel and they drove along the Clarke Airbase Boundary Road into town. Once the largest airport in South East Asia, B52s and other heavy bombers had taken off every day to bomb Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. They had dropped more bombs on Laos alone than the entire ordinance dropped on Germany in World War Two; thousands of US serviceman running the base along with tens of thousands of Philipino workers. The Air Base supplied every thing required for living, an entire city of houses and shopping centres, sports fields and club houses, everything except sex, and to supply that a forest of bars sprung up just outside the boundary fence.

The Americans had gone and the city was empty but the bars remained and attracted thousands of men from all over the world every year.

© Julian. All rights reserved by the author.