Unsung Warrior Box Set, page 53
part #1 of Unsung Warrior Series
It didn’t take long to get what he wanted. Several very reluctant men, and one woman, were pushed to the front by the others. Once they were inside the house – Maric left the body out on the front of the platform – it turned out they were several drinking partners of the trader, a noble who negotiated what the prices should be in the trading, and a housekeeper. Alcohol was rare this far into the interior, but it was one way the trader would have gained a foothold. Maric grimaced sourly at the thought, then started with the noble.
Was the trader working alone? Did he visit the other Iban villages? Why was he living here permanently? Maric deduced the permanence from the belongings he saw in the house, and the appearance of the housekeeper.
It appeared the noble knew nothing. He was elderly, and Maric knew the Dayak aristocracy sometimes held themselves apart from the rest of their society. It was a vain attempt to recreate the old days, when they’d wielded a lot more power.
When Maric turned to the three men who had, apparently, been the trader’s social group in the village, it was a different story. He had rarely seen men so nervous. Deciding to build on that fear he called Menan and some of the warriors into the house. Then he stationed them around the walls. Now the trader’s drinking buddies were terrified.
The Kayans had gone to war wearing traditional beaten bark clothing, pants and head bands only. Anything else was piled up back at the last camp site, with one of the war party standing guard. Maric had suggested camouflage paint at some stage, and they had used the colors they ground up for ceremonial dancing.
It was war paint on a grand scale, covering the face, shoulders and chest. It wasn’t really camouflage, but it gave the Kayan a tremendous sense of pride. In the end Maric said nothing, and let it pass.
Parang hung at each belt in a traditional wooden scabbard, and the Kayan scowled at the three men as they fingered the hilts of their swords. There were enough legends about the nomads, their lust for heads, and their supposedly supernatural abilities, to really unsettle the captives.
Fear held their tongues until Maric figured out what was holding them back. If two of the men could say it was the third who had talked – when the trader’s friends came looking – they might get out of this alive. It came down to which of the three was going to crack first.
Maric offered each man a small sum of Rupiah if they would all tell what they knew, and an hour to get their gear together. He didn’t expect them to have any family. Hangers-on like these usually didn’t have much else going on in their lives. He told the three men they should take this opportunity to get off the booze, and move to a part of Indonesia where no one knew them.
There was a lot of subdued discussion, which Maric pretended not to hear. The men looked nervously at the Kayan warriors around them, before they nodded their heads in agreement. Maric had to admit they didn’t really have a choice, but that didn’t bother him.
A few minutes later he had the intel he wanted.
There was a trader in each of the Long Pahangai villages now, keeping an eye on things. The center of operations, though, was in the next village over. The newcomers, Iban from the coast, had paid for the materials for a new longhouse, and lent a hand in the building of it. Then they’d set up an office in one end of it.
At first the villagers had been grateful, but now the true cost of the longhouse was becoming apparent.
The villagers were expected to guard the traditional paths the nomadic tribes used each year, and turn all travelers back. If threats didn’t work, some of the nomadic people were expected to disappear. If there were any real problems, the newcomers would step in with the military-style weapons they had brought with them.
The men tried to describe the weapons, and Maric came to the conclusion the newcomers had a number of 303s from the Second World war, and two of the older style AK 47s. Ammunition for both would be readily available, and cheap.
Then he tried to make sense of why the newcomers were here. The pressure on the nomadic tribes was a land grab, no doubt about that. It wouldn’t be over logging rights, because the Indonesian government was at last acting to keep logging out of the tracts of original forest they still had left. Many areas had already been turned into state forests. The government was enforcing its new rules about logging by clamping down at the ports, where tropical hardwoods were exported.
Long Pahangai was also something of an inaccessible place, and that would make it expensive to build a logging road in. Then Maric wondered how the materials for the longhouse had arrived. By river probably, a few pieces at a time, and hauled overland for the last few klicks.
When he asked about other possibilities, the men hadn’t heard anything like the helicopter noises he made, and they didn’t know of any portable sawmills that had been brought in.
That left oil or minerals. There were oil fields along the coast, and gas maybe halfway to the Pegunungen Muller range, but as far as Maric could recall the Schwaner and Muller mountain ranges in the center of the island weren’t conducive to hydrocarbons. So that left minerals. He remembered the diamond mine he had helped liberate a hundred klicks south of the village. So, diamonds maybe, or copper, or rare earths.
Someone must have sent an old airliner fitted out as an airlab over the area, and picked up enough in the way of magnetic anomalies to be interested. That’s when the politics would have started. Whoever it was probably had the Iban tribal council paid off already, and now they wanted to squeeze the other Dayak tribes out of the royalties split.
Maric shook his head. Bloody commerce. It made a few people rich, and ruined the lives of millions. People who had made some sort of peace with their environment, and still had a decent community life.
Still, that wasn’t his problem. The 303s and the AK 47s were. He would have to discuss it with the Kayans. He wanted to make sure they understood what they were up against, and what the stakes were.
CHAPTER 3
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Maric sat the Iban villagers down, and posted some guards over them. Then he gathered the Kayans together, and told them what they might be up against.
Their answer came back at him in a rush. They knew they were being driven off their ancestral lands, and they declared they would do anything to keep the ancient trails open. They were profoundly grateful that “Pohon Yang Tinggi,” was here to lead them into battle. Maric had heard himself called The Tall Tree before, a mark of respect, and he kept his silence as he heard it again.
They also said something about the gods demanding the Kayan take action, that came from their Animist, or possibly Catholic, traditions. Maric couldn’t tell which. Putussibau was a Catholic mission base, and had been since 1913. Though missionaries had been active in the area much earlier than that.
It was quite a speech, picked up and carried on by a number of the more important Kayan in turn. Menan drew the sword at his waist and held it up for everyone to see. It was his grandfather’s, a notable chief. There were three yellow club shapes worked into the back of the single-sided blade. They were brass, and signified that this sword had taken three heads. Once they tasted blood, as was well known, swords were always hungry for more.
“Karena nenek moyang saya berperang, saya di sini. Jika saya berkelahi, anak-anak anak-anak saya akan ada di sini,” he said.
Because my ancestors fought, Menan was saying, I am here. If I fight, my children and their children will be able to live in this land. Maric had to agree with the sentiment. Evil reigned unchecked when good men did nothing.
Pejuang had been questioning some of the Iban hunters as he worked his way round the outside of the crowd. They’d spoken freely to him as another hunter, and he believed them when they said they wouldn’t warn the other villages. Maric accepted Pejuang’s assessment of the situation, but he left the crowd with a stern warning not to travel far from their village during the next few days.
A few minutes later he gave the order for the war party to form up for another ground-covering run through the forest. It was barely midday, and they could be at the next village in two hours if they moved.
Unfortunately, the war party lost the advantage of surprise about a klick out from the next village. Two Kayans taking point, fifty meters ahead of the main body, took a path alongside a stream. Moments later they passed a group of youngsters, tucked in under the bank and hunting freshwater crayfish. The boys broke from cover, and then there were too few Kayans and too many boys. The youngsters were like a suddenly startled hover of trout, scattering in all directions.
Maric heard the noise, and grimaced when he was told the news. Civilians in a war zone were always a random factor, and it made him uneasy. His first idea, of advancing on a wide front alongside the stream until it entered the village, wasn’t going to work anymore.
Maric beckoned Pejuang and the two Kayans who had been out on point to come over, and they went over the landmarks around the village with him. The nomadic peoples had a photographic memory of the many trails and villages they’d traveled through in their lifetime.
Maric learned there was a hill to the left of the village from their current position, and that would provide an elevated place for covering fire. The undergrowth on the hill was thick, since the villagers didn’t use the area for anything. The cultivated fields were on the far side of the village, and there was jungle right up to the houses once again.
Maric was mulling over a new plan of attack when the Iban came pouring through the trees a hundred meters away. The boys’ description of painted bodies must have put the village on high alert.
Maric whistled softly, and the Kayans melted away into the forest. They wouldn’t go far. It was easy enough to avoid someone who was looking for you in the dense Kalimantan jungle.
The Iban were a ragged bunch, but they swished parang back and forth expertly. Maric almost smiled. Never underestimate someone who used a weapon like that every day of their life.
The villagers were warming up their muscles, though they didn’t know what for. Not yet. Among them taller figures waved 303 rifles from side to side. These were better fed specimens from the coast, and they were looking for something to shoot at. Maric counted four rifles, and two revolvers. The revolvers were similar to the one the first trader had owned, and they were jammed into the belts of two of the coastal men.
Maric had joined Menan behind a large rock with several trees growing around it, and he watched the Iban advance. The area was open, probably because it was close to the village and on level ground. The undergrowth would have been whittled away for the everyday purposes of the people.
When the Kayans didn’t reappear, there was a burst of conversation as the Iban tried to decide what to do. One of the newcomers barked something sharply and lowered his rifle to point at the ground. The rest of the group went quiet, and began to drift back toward the village.
Maric didn’t believe the Iban were just giving up. He gave them an hour before he sent scouts forward to investigate the village. The taller coastal Iban would be waiting for them now, and that was going to complicate things. He wondered for a moment if it was wise sending the scouts forward against rifles. Then he remembered the Kayan still hunted game as a way of life, and the Iban did not. His scouts would be fine.
When the scouts got back, he learned that the village looked as if it was deserted. He listened carefully to the scouts’ description of the place, including the position of the new longhouse in the middle of it. He nodded slowly. Someone among the newcomers had some tactical experience. The deserted village was there to draw the Kayan war party in. Then the prepared positions Maric expected to be in the surrounding jungle would cut them to pieces.
He remembered the trader from the first village. The man had shown some good knife skills, and that suggested he’d been a mercenary, or a pirate along the coast, in his younger days. The newcomers would all have a similar background. It was going to make things interesting for his war party.
The AK 47s were the Kayan’s biggest problem. If the weapons were nested, with a clear field of fire and other fighters in support, they would be hard to take out. Maric wished he had brought a light-weight folding sniper rifle with him, but he hadn’t anticipated the current situation. He had his Glock, but it wasn’t accurate at distance. The attack on the village was going to take some very careful planning.
Two of the Kayan men suddenly appeared beside Menan, breathing heavily. They dropped long canvas bags on the ground. The contents looked like a number of disassembled fishing rods, until Maric saw what they really were. Some of the legendary Dayak blowpipes. Menan smiled toward Maric, and made the palm up sideways movement that meant he was offering them as a gift.
The headman’s son must have sent men back to collect the weapons from the last camp site. The men must have left as soon as the trader’s drinking buddies had talked about the weapons at the new longhouse. Maric had just been wishing he had a sniper rifle, and now he had the local equivalent.
He wished Menan would let him know when he was planning these things, all the same. There needed to be one chain of command if casualties were to be kept to a minimum, but that didn’t seem to register with the Kayan leader.
The nomadic tribes had a system of hereditary nobility within them, and that was a chain of command Menan would honor as much as Maric’s military one. The tall man understood he was working in a very different culture, but he hoped it wouldn’t cost unnecessary lives.
Then it was time to do something about the apparently deserted village. Maric would need to work out some tactics to unsettle the defenders. But the last thing he was going to do was order a frontal assault. Not while the Iban had the upper hand in weapons. He would wear them down instead.
Menan was given the task of putting the first part of Maric’s plan into action, and he selected the men he thought would suit it best. Once the warriors had their instructions, they headed for the right side of the village. They would move through the jungle and appear on the tree line on the opposite side of the village to the hill.
A few minutes later Menan’s warriors made a dash across the short stretch of open ground around the village, using whatever cover they could find. They took up positions inside the first of the woven wall houses. The men were fast, and agile. They jumped cleanly onto the building’s more substantial wooden platform and disappeared inside. There was no reaction from the village, or the surrounding jungle.
After a few more minutes, another handful took up a position in the house next to it. In response a shot echoed out of the jungle on the hill, and kicked up splinters from one of the wooden platforms. That had been a 303 by the sound of it. Maric smiled to himself. Lack of discipline was already counting against the coastal newcomers.
He let the situation simmer, and then another handful of Kayan infiltrated the village. Five minutes later the defenders snapped. A host of villagers boiled out of the longhouse, where they had been silently waiting, and poured through the spaces between the houses. It was only the men. The women and children had left as soon as trouble threatened.
Menan’s warriors were out of the houses and covering the short stretch to the jungle at the first sound of movement. They had been a feint, an advance that was only intended to see what was there.
A rattle of rifle fire started up from the hill, and Maric noted the position of two AK 47s. They were close to the edge of the jungle, and the undergrowth around them had been slashed to allow a wide field of fire across the village. The heavier thump of 303s added a distinctive undertone, and dirt kicked up around the retreating warriors.
Fortunately the shooters didn’t get an opportunity to adjust their aim, and the targets were moving fast. All of the warriors made it to the jungle, and then were gone.
The Iban followed them, growing in confidence as they saw their quarry in full retreat. Once the bulk of the pursuers had passed into the forest, there came a sharp call, and figures burst out of their hiding places.
Some erupted from the ground, covered in moss and mud, and others dropped out of the trees. The retreating Kayan, reinforced by others waiting in the shadows, turned abruptly and set upon their pursuers. The Iban had been quickly surrounded.
As in the first village, the new combat skills of the war party spread terror among the Iban. Once inside the first wild swing of a parang, the Kayan warriors took control of the situation in moments.
Dozens of unconscious or cowed villagers were dragged deeper into the jungle and gagged and trussed. Maric had insisted that none of them be killed. It had been hard to get the message home to Menan’s warriors, especially when there were so many old scores to be settled between the tribes, but Maric didn’t intend to be responsible for any new ones.
An unnatural stillness returned to the jungle, and Maric was content to let it lengthen. It was as if the living forest had swallowed half the Iban village alive.
CHAPTER 4
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Taking down the coastal newcomers, though, was going to be more difficult. They would be wary now, and the thick undergrowth on the hill reduced the advantages of planning. You couldn’t see your enemy until you were right on top of them.
Maric started with the two well-entrenched AK 47 sites. It didn’t take him long to work out a plan for them. One of the Kayan warriors worked his way up through the village, keeping out of sight of the hill. The houses seemed empty now. Another one moved toward the second AK 47 site, staying inside the cover of the jungle.
Maric gave the two men plenty of time to get into position. It also gave the Iban defenders a little more time to sweat. Eventually Maric nodded to Menan, who gave an impressive rendition of one of the common creatures in the Kalimantan jungle. It sounded oddly like a chicken cackling. “Fer-rog,” said Menan, when Maric asked him what it was. Then Maric remembered that sound himself. He’d been introduced to the strange creatures when staying at Sanggau, with his friend Dick’s relatives.
