Unsung Warrior Box Set, page 52
part #1 of Unsung Warrior Series
The country above the rapids had never been logged, or cut over for the slash and burn farming practiced by the people of the Dayak villages. The trees were thick at the base, sometimes more than two men could join their arms around, but they weren’t tall. The war party was entering mountain country, and that meant colder climates, even in the tropics, and less fertile soils. They were on the outskirts of the Pegunungen Muller Range. Somewhere far ahead was the highest peak, Bukit Liangpran, at 2240m.
It was a far cry from the places Maric found himself when he was on one of his usual ‘Gray Ops’ missions. The combination of private funding and ‘retired’ elite forces personnel acted outside of any normal channel. Gray Ops had bases in a number of countries now, but it owed allegiance to no government. The personnel were well paid by their backers to keep the lines of commerce open, and that meant stamping out pirate nests and eliminating fundamentalist bases that were making a nuisance of themselves.
This mission was a favor to a friend, Well, a favor to a lot of Maric’s Dayak friends. A whole tribe in fact. The tall man was thinking he would spend a week in Kalimantan, and then he might be off to another problem area, this time in Kosovo. Neither of them were Gray Ops sanctioned, though his boss Cal was trying to get him support on the Kosovo one.
The high-profile businesses, and individuals, who paid for Gray Ops teams to keep commerce flowing were a tight-fisted lot. They didn’t want to pay for ‘good deeds’, or ‘justice to be done’. Maric had been asked for help by a Croatian special forces operative who had helped Maric’s recon team when they went into the Albanian mountains against a notorious figure funding terrorist activity. The operative’s name was Marko Horvat, and he had been with the Croatian Special Operations Battalion for three years now.
His sister had married an Albanian from Kosovo, and it turned out the only work he could get was in North Kosovo, an area still disputed by the Serbs. Marko had told her it was too dangerous for her to go there, but she was pregnant by then, and felt she had no choice.
Now the whole village had fallen off the map. The few messages that were getting out painted a grim picture, but no one wanted to intervene in such a politically fractured area. Peace was still fragile after the Balkan wars that had rampaged through a number of countries in the area, in the late 1990s.
Marko had turned to Maric in desperation, and the tall man was still thinking about his response. In the meantime, he thought, as he sidestepped the perfectly smooth trunk of a good-sized tree, he was going to enjoy the jungle fastnesses of Kalimantan once again. Sometimes it felt like his second home.
Maric could hear nothing from the warriors fanned out on either side of him, and that made him smile. He prided himself on knowing how to move quietly. In truth he was about the best at it there was – for a white man. But the Kayan were a nomadic tribe of Dayaks born to this wilderness, a sea of green in the middle of Kalimantan. They were without peer in their native environment.
There was a flash of movement to Maric’s left, and a lean, brown shape came into view among the trees, running strongly. The warrior angled in, until he was running alongside the tall man. He held up three fingers, then five, and then splayed the fingers on that hand as far apart as they would go. Maric smacked the back of his fist against the back of the man’s hand, which was the okay signal, and the runner angled away again to take up his former position.
The Kayan warriors had caught on to the hand signals Maric used in his SAS work quickly. He guessed the signals were similar to the ones the men used when they were stalking game.
Menan had just told him that all three of the groups on his left still had their full complement of five warriors, and they were spread out in the patterns Maric had drilled into them.
Moving at speed had its problems, from a twisted ankle to being bitten by a two-step snake, but Menan’s squad were all in good shape. Maric had expected no less. The small red and black two-step snake got its name from its supposed properties. If you were bitten you took two steps, and then you fell down dead.
Menan was the headman’s son. Though he had taken over most of his father’s duties, he would not spiritually be the headman himself until certain ceremonies were performed. For that honor he would have to wait.
Maric was struck once again by Menan’s grace and speed as he angled away. The nomadic Kayan were superb specimens. They were a tougher breed of Dayak than those nearer the coast, or those who had settled in the inland villages.
For one thing they were more independent, more self-possessed. A firm coating of muscle rippled under Menan’s heavily suntanned skin. It made both of them laugh that he came barely to the tall man’s shoulder.
Pejuang would report in from Maric’s right, sooner or later. He was acknowledged as the tribe’s best hunter, and was a popular choice to lead the squad on Maric’s other side.
The war party had been traveling through this terrain for two days now, living off the land. Whatever they caught each day, or gathered from the forest, was supplemented by a handful of rice at the one meal of the day. Each night the warriors built a long shelter that kept them off the ground. They did it in a surprisingly short amount of time.
Maric and the warriors on either side of him were close to their goal now, and that was why they were moving more quickly. The Iban village up ahead would have hunters of its own out and about, and people collecting firewood or gathering food from local sources. Maric had shown his men how to execute a silent and rapid take down, and then trained them hard in that skill. Keeping the element of surprise would give the war party the best chance of entering the village undetected.
The Iban had been the fiercest of the Dayaks, the most vigorous of the headhunters, but they were all settled in villages now. They’d been renowned pirates in the 18th century, and even today ran motorboats out of East Kalimantan with piratical intent. Sometimes they made world news as they drove the lightweight craft alongside marine traffic in the congested waters of Indonesia, demanding money.
There was a grunt and a scuffle to Maric’s right, then silence. He figured his men had come across a lone hunter. There hadn’t been enough noise for more than one, and the war party was still a long way from the Iban village. The warriors would have gagged him and trussed him, like the biggest of the game they caught, in thirty seconds. They would be back with the war party in less than five minutes.
The Kayan intel Maric had gathered suggested the Iban of the interior weren’t a problem. It was the people selling them weapons, and putting ideas in their heads, that were a problem. Maric didn’t want his war party killing more of the villagers than was absolutely necessary. Blood feuds were hard to stop. No deaths would be ideal.
It wasn’t long before Maric started to climb a long slope toward a crest. He had been prepped for this. The first of the Iban villages was on the other side of the ridge ahead. It was north-facing, and the cultivated areas lay below the village. That was good. There would be cover right up to the village itself.
Then Menan and Pejuang dropped in beside him, and Menan flicked his open hand in the ‘wait’ signal. Maric eased back to a walk, and then stood silently while they gave the outlying squads time to report in.
The sounds of the village seemed unnaturally loud, even at this distance. A stomp of feet on floorboards, and the dull clunk of wooden spoons inside communal bowls as meals were prepared.
The forest, by contrast, was unnaturally silent. That meant there were predators about. A good hunter would have known what that meant, but there were no signs of alarm from the village.
A runner came in from Maric’s right. He conveyed with a few hand gestures that a group of women had been collecting fern shoots not far from the village. They had been captured, and herded deeper into the forest under guard. Their presence might be missed by someone in the village at any moment, so it was time to move. Menan looked up at Maric sharply. The tall man nodded, and the three men set off to lead the attack on the village.
Maric came in among the roughly-constructed huts somewhere between the two bands of Kayan warriors. He ghosted through the mayhem as surprised villagers put up whatever resistance they could muster. An Iban swung a machete-like sword at one of the Kayans, who jumped quickly back. Maric stepped to one side and cracked the ribs under the man’s armpit with his bent knuckles. The parang dropped from the man’s fingers as pain radiated through his chest and he sank to his knees.
Everywhere Maric looked, the Kayan prevailed. His intensive training had shown them how to get inside the swing of enemy blades, and the Iban were shocked by an enemy who was suddenly so close. Then it took one hard strike to the right spot to take them out of the fight. Maric grinned in satisfaction. Unarmed beat armed every time.
Then he heard a shot, the last thing he wanted to hear on this mission. The villagers sometimes had old 22s for birds and small game, even this far from civilization, but the Dayaks usually considered it dishonorable to kill an enemy from a distance.
A Kayan burst through the woven back of a nearby Iban house, and scrambled away. Maric couldn’t see whether the warrior had been injured or not. The tall man took a short run up and jumped to the edge of the platform that supported the house. He landed soundlessly, noting the sun was on the other side of the dilapidated building. An outline wasn’t going to give him away.
A paunchy Iban in an old T-shirt and safari shorts stuck his head through the opening, with an ancient revolver thrust out in front of him. Maric didn’t recognize the make of the weapon, but the man had to be a trader from the coast. Maybe this was one of those stirring up trouble among the Iban, and making life difficult for the nomadic Kayan. Whatever he was, he had little battle sense.
Maric struck the man’s wrist sharply with his knuckles, and the gun went flying.
“Menyerah,” he said firmly, and the man looked toward him. His eyes went wide when he saw a tall white man in army camouflage. Rather than ‘giving up’ as requested, he ducked back inside the building. Maric sighed, and followed. Some people didn’t have the brains God gave a frog.
The trader stopped when he saw Pejuang and another Kayan in the doorway of the house. Then he turned back toward Maric, and the tall man almost smiled. A New Zealand SAS soldier was the soft option?
The trader stepped forward, and drew a knife. He drew it fast, and he held it right, pointing out. Overhead strikes were for short-lived knife fighters. Maric made a rapid reassessment of him.
Good quality knives were rare among the people of inland Borneo, and combat knives were unheard of. The villagers did almost everything with machetes, or the similarly sized parang swords. This guy must have once been a mercenary, or part of a pirate crew down at the coast. Whichever it was, he was foolish to try and relive his glory days.
Maric saw Pejuang lift his parang, and whistled a soft stop command. This was the tall man’s problem. The Kayans were to stay out of it.
The trouble with knife fights was you couldn’t guarantee who would win. There were too many ‘accidents’ on either side. And even when Maric did win, which he would, a bad cut along the way could cause real problems in the tropics. Maric was trained to stop knife fights fast, and that meant the attacker went down in the first few moves, and he didn’t get up.
He was still thinking this when the trader tried to slash him across the chest. He picked that the move was a feint at once, and moved a few inches to get out of the way. Then the trader reversed the knife and went in low, before attempting to gut him. Maric saw it coming and went sideways. Then he hit the trader’s elbow so hard he saw the man’s shoulder lift and slam into the side of his neck.
Desperate now, the trader brought the knife around in a short arc toward the side of Maric’s neck. The tall man brought one hand up inside the trader’s elbow, and re-directed the knife with the other. It sank into the man’s throat with a soft ripping sound, and then blood began to bubble out around it.
Maric removed the knife almost as quickly, and his attacker collapsed on the floor. Removing the knife was a mercy. As the blood flowed from the wound the trader’s blood pressure dropped, and he lost consciousness. Maric cursed, and lowered the body to the floor. He’d wanted to get some intel out of the man.
“Bugger,” he said again, more softly. It was a favorite swear word in Kiwi land. Maric had been brought up as a country boy in New Zealand, and there were plenty of opportunities to use that word in the course of an average farming day.
Pejuang beckoned him to the doorway, and they stood on the covered porch looking down at the assembled villagers. The Kayans stood around the outside of the assembly, in complete control of the situation. Some of them had cuts from the recent fighting that they’d tied off with a rough bandage. Maric couldn’t tell how many of the villagers had injuries of their own.
The war party had suffered minor wounds, all things considered, and the only person dead was the trader. That gave Maric a real sense of satisfaction.
CHAPTER 2
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“Orang-orang pahangai panjang,” began Maric. Long Pahangai was a collection of eleven villages, unless another had sprung up in the last few months. It was always hard to tell. What he wanted to ask the ‘people of Long Pahangai,’ was what was happening in the other villages. Had anything unusual turned up in the lives of the people recently? Were there any strangers around?
He was using Indonesian, the one language the many races and sub-tribes of the interior used when they wanted to communicate with one another. Around the coast of Kalimantan it was English, with Chinese a close second.
Maric wanted to find out why the Iban were shutting down the traditional north-south routes for the nomadic Penan and Kayan peoples. The nomads traveled into the dense forests of North Kalimantan in the dry season, and returned to build grass and sapling huts in the more open south in the wet season.
Attacks on small groups along the way had started six months ago, and become more frequent since. In some cases individuals had been captured and sold into slavery on the more lawless coast of East Kalimantan. That was why Maric was here. To help the people who had helped him less than a year before.
When Maric’s ‘Gray Ops’ boss, Cal, wanted someone to lead a reconnaissance team into South Kalimantan, he recruited Maric, a retired New Zealand SAS captain.
Maric had often taken R & R in Kalimantan during his two tours of duty in Afghanistan. He would stay with an old friend, Dick, a plantation owner, and his friend’s Dayak wife, Maria, and their children. Maric already knew the language, and he was familiar with the jungle conditions.
The mission had been to locate a previously unknown diamond mine that was funding the terrorist activities of a shadowy East European figure. A man who was known only as ‘The Count’. Dick had brought in some of the nomadic tribesmen, part of his extended family, to act as guides. That was where Maric’s friendship with the nomadic Kayan had begun.
When word came that the Kayan were having difficulties of their own, he didn’t feel he could refuse their request for help. Cal didn’t have anything for him in the Gray Ops theater at the time, so here he was.
He was here to do good things, trying to put the world to rights. It was a pleasure to be part of a fairly straightforward case of ‘stop the baddies’, instead of the complexities that sometimes bedeviled Gray Ops work. It wasn’t always clear if a Gray Ops team was on the side of right in some cases.
Maric and his recon team had located the diamond mine, and brought in a large Gray Ops force to secure it, before it was turned over to the Indonesian Government. A few months after that he was part of a US/NATO force that had finally tracked The Count down to his lair in the Albanian Mountains and finished the man’s operation for good.
Maric had felt no regret when one of his team shot Conte Stefan Kastrioti at the end of the mission, rather than letting him go to trial. A trial would have promoted him as a figurehead who encouraged other idiots to follow him. In Maric’s view it was a good thing the count’s story never made it into the media.
There was some foot shuffling among the Iban villagers in front of Maric’s position at the front of the roughly-built house. This was followed by a few glances at their neighbors. Then it was back to downcast faces.
So, he thought, no one wants to say anything in front of the others. That told him the new influence in the area, whoever it might be, ruled by fear. And greed of course. Telling the Iban to keep other tribes out, to look like big shots in front of others, and then keep everything for themselves.
That approach probably worked for a while, until they began to realize what they’d actually bought into.
Maric sighed. Human nature was somehow worse than the ‘red in tooth and claw’ law of the jungle. At least something that wanted to eat you was honest about its intentions. Unfortunately, there were no rules and regulations this deep in the jungle, and that was a problem.
Fear of the law kept people honest, mostly. But the nearest police station was at Putussibau, on the Kapuas River, more than a hundred kilometers downstream. The town had a population of 14,000 and one telephone line, if it was working. Roads turned to potholed gravel well before the town, and became jungle tracks shortly after that.
It was the sort of situation that gave rise to warlords in remote places, and he hoped his war party wasn’t headed into a full-scale confrontation with an armed gang. He was used to it, but the Kayans didn’t have the training.
Maric had spent many hours learning interrogation techniques. Now he was sizing up the Iban, looking to see how he could turn their discomfort to his advantage. He strode back into the house, and pulled the dead trader to the door. Then he lifted the man’s upper body up by his hair. The jagged wound in the man’s throat opened and closed as Maric did so, and there were gasps from the crowd.
“Saya membutuhkan semua orang yang mengenal pria ini di dalam rumah ini. Sekarang,” said Maric sternly. Anyone who was known to spend time with this man needed to come into the house. Now.
