“Stay here, I’m going out,” said Juan. “Try to communicate with them.” He worked forward silently, then only ten yards from the nearest abo, let out a long wailing cry. The abos turned, surprised, nervous, holding up their weapons.
Juan gave the cry again, but different this time. It was shorter and more strident. The abos talked among themselves, their prisoners forgotten for the moment.
The third time he gave the cry, Juan stepped out into the clearing. He was bare to the waist, had no hat or weapons with him. When he ended the cry, he gave two signs with his hands, then bowed low and came up slowly.
Juan watched the abos. Some were still talking. From the back came one man, slightly taller than the rest of them. Most stood no more than five feet. This man wore a colorful headpiece made of bird feathers and crowned with orchids. He had a cape made of some native vines and fibers. In his left hand he carried a machete, probably a relic of some World War II Japanese Army camp.
The abo chief stopped just outside his ring of warriors, brandished the machete at Juan, who put his hands together in front of him and bowed again.
“I don’t know if this is working,” Juan said to his lip mike. “I’m using some old inter-tribe rituals I learned. I hope he knows them.”
The warriors wore only loincloths that looked to Juan like they were made from soft leather. A stiff belt held up the garment, and their bodies had been painted with bright red and yellows.
Juan took in all of this at a glance. Not a war party. He didn’t know what the celebration was.
“Your game,” Murdock said on the radio. “All our weapons are on lock/safety.”
Juan came up from his deep bow, glad his head was still firmly attached to his shoulders, and took two slow steps toward the chief. He stood there, arms folded, the machete gleaming in his left hand.
Juan used the sign for “friend” that he had learned from three different tribes. It was almost the same for each one. Now he used it again and again, changing it slightly, until the old chief’s face brightened. Then he frowned. He walked closer to Juan, pointed to Juan’s pants and boots, then at those of the closest SEAL, and shouted something.
Juan nodded and made another sign, then another. The old chief frowned, then looked frightened.
“Peace, we come in peace,” Juan said in English. Then he said the same thing in Filipino, and the chief’s head came up. He chattered two or three words, and Juan relaxed.
The old one knew the Filipino language. At least a little of it. Juan began to talk in that language, and a moment later the chief bellowed out what could only be a command. He bent and stabbed the machete into the dirt, and all the warriors laid their weapons on the ground and sat beside them.
“I’m feeling better already,” Murdock said into his mike.
“We’re not out of here yet,” Juan said. “There are customs and courtesies that must be observed. Remember, these are Stone Age people. The machete is not a weapon, it’s a symbol of command.”
Juan took two steps closer to the old chief, who made some motions, and both men sat down facing each other four feet apart. Their feet almost touched.
As they talked, Juan soon learned what words he could use that the old chief would understand. The chief said he had been captured when he was a boy and taken to a mission school where they’d taught him modern ways and to speak the Filipino language. When he was twelve, he stole the machete, wounded a guard, escaped, and traveled back to his people. He hated the modern ways, and had kept his tribe pure and free from them.
“We wish only to pass,” said Juan. “There are bad men near the coast we must deal with.”
The old chief’s eye lit up. “Two men go to coast to get coconuts. Last time one was killed by boom-boom. From ten coconut palms away he was killed.”
“Those are the men we hunt,” Juan said. “It is not your hunt, it is ours, and we should be going.”
“Must stay for ceremony. The rite of the virgins. Must stay. Come.” They stood.
“We just got sucked into watching a ceremony,” Juan said in his mike. “Bring everything. We’re no longer a big danger to them. But be cautious. Any little thing could bring an outburst of anger and violence.”
“You heard the man,” Murdock said to his mike. “We go see the pretty, then get back on the road.”
The warriors picked up their weapons and scurried to fires and small lean-tos, and then assembled near the large fire at the end of the village.
Juan figured the entire village was there, including children. Everyone sat cross-legged in rough rows in a semicircle around the fire. It had burned down now, but still gave off a lot of light and heat.
The SEALs were positioned in back of the warriors. They sat cross-legged in rows. The women and children were on the other side of an aisle. The chief had vanished; now he came out wearing a jacket that had been covered with orchids of every size and color. He still wore the headdress, and now carried a white cane.
A small stone platform had been crafted in front of the fire. The stones looked to Juan as if they had been chiseled into precise shapes and fitted together without mortar and wedged into place.
The chief stood on the platform and waved the white cane. The chanting began and continued in a higher or lower tone as the chief seemed to direct it with the cane.
Then he stepped aside and a drummer began to beat a slow rhythm. Three young women came to the small area in front of the platform and began dancing to the music. Most of the women in the tribe were bare to the waist, but these three wore blouses Juan figured were made of soft animal skins. As the beat picked up in tempo, the dancing became faster as well, and soon the three young women had flung off their blouses and were topless.
Now their dancing took on an erotic tone and it went faster and faster, and one after another the girls dropped their short skirts and danced naked in the soft moonlight mixed with the firelight.
Suddenly the drum stopped and the dancers froze in the positions they were in; then on a single drumbeat they turned and ran off into the darkness.
The ceremony was over. Juan sat near the chief, who did some explaining.
“We are alone here. In the old days we would raid neighboring tribes and steal women. Others did the same to us. It was a way of bringing fresh blood into our society. Without it we would wither and die. For ten years we have had no fresh blood. Now we will. The three virgins you saw dancing are ready tonight to become with child. The three will approach your men, each select one or two and mate with them. The mating should last all night.
“I can’t allow your men to leave until this life-giving act is done. I know you will understand.”
“Let me talk to my chief.”
Murdock laughed when he heard what the old chief had said.
“Impossible. We have to be on that ridge overlooking the hostage center before daylight.”
Juan shook his head. “It’s too far now for us to get there. Besides, if we refuse to mate with the three virgins, there would be huge trouble. It’s an honor the chief is giving us, and in his society, there is not the slightest chance that such an honor can be refused. If we try to walk away now, there could be considerable bloodshed. Those arrows and spears are deadly, and we would have no warning.”
Murdock scowled. He called Jaybird, Sadler, DeWitt, and Domingo together and Juan went over the situation.
“Hot damn, pussy tonight,” Jaybird yelped.
Domingo looked at Juan. “I have heard of strange customs for some of these Stone Age tribes. This one seems slightly more advanced than some of them. Commander, I don’t see how we can risk the chance of losing some men by refusing this honor.”