Chapter 1427 - The Cannon
Vince raised his binoculars. Inside the battery parapet, three stout wooden poles had been driven into the ground at diagonal angles, their tops secured together with iron fittings to form a crude derrick. A block and tackle dangled from the apex, a hook swinging at its end. Nearby, the Spaniards directed coolies to install a winch with trailing rope. He studied the arrangement for a long moment, then lowered his gaze to the beach below.
A plank road had been laid across the sand. Colonial soldiers in gaudy uniforms clustered along its edges—some gripping pikes, but most wielding bamboo whips and the forked rests used for matchlocks—driving forward a large gang of local coolies. The laborers, stripped to the waist and already streaked with welts, hauled on ropes that drew the eye inevitably to their burden.
A black cannon. This was no bored-out antique Spanish bronze piece. It was larger than any gun mounted on any fortress or ship in Macao or Manila—comparable, perhaps, only to the main armament the Australians fitted to their steam warships. The barrel was black iron, its peculiar profile flaring like a magnified soda bottle. Beneath the thick, squat weapon sat a triangular carriage of rough-hewn timber beams, fitted with four pathetically small iron wheels. Without the planks beneath it, such an ungainly contraption would surely have sunk into the beach and refused to budge.
"When was it spotted?" Vince asked.
"Before sunrise—5:15. We saw a ship first." The Special Reconnaissance Team member pointed southwest, and Vince swung his binoculars in that direction. Sure enough, a sloop rode at anchor near the coast, sails furled. "The Spanish have been busy laying the temporary road ever since. They set up the derrick about an hour ago. The cannon was just unloaded by block and tackle."
He turned back to the cannon being dragged laboriously up the beach. Soldiers bellowed orders while bamboo whips and matchlock forks fell incessantly on the coolies' heads and backs. Beneath the lashing and the crushing weight, their faces contorted in agony. Vince observed this cruelty without visible reaction. He searched his memory instead. Visiting Fort Quemoy with his father in childhood was too distant to recall clearly. But he remembered vividly his time as a recruit at Fort Jackson, when they'd toured Charleston to see Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie. Young Private Vince Lando had stood awestruck before the massive Dahlgren guns. Now he felt that same jolt of recognition. Though he lacked professional knowledge of antique ordnance, he knew enough to understand that those Civil War–era fortress guns had been built to sink ironclads. If the Esmeralda were unlucky enough to catch a shell from one of these, the consequences were easy to imagine.
"If I gave the order now," Vince asked suddenly, "could you kill one of them?"
"Can't hit at this range—over two thousand meters," the sniper replied. He pointed to a sparse patch of brush south of the villa. "But if we took up a position over there, no problem."
Vince shook his head. The tower was an excellent observation post they couldn't afford to abandon. Now he regretted not adding a few Barretts or .50 McMillans to the Mackerel's cargo hold—even an M2 heavy machine gun would have helped. He lifted the cover of the speaking tube set into the wall and pulled the bell.
"Mimi, is that you? Send the big telescope and the camera up to the tower top. Right now."
He closed the tube and muttered, "God knows when those bastards will start test firing."
When the Count returned to the shooting house, Captain Pilar and his colleagues lay sprawled across chaise longues, dead drunk and snoring loudly. Andrade was locked in heated discussion with the mayor about Oriental art and idolatry, peppering his discourse with famous maxims from Augustine and Aquinas. The Count motioned for a servant to bring over another chaise longue, then settled onto the veranda beside Alfonso.
Vince studied this newly prominent figure—the talk of Manila lately. Alfonso's gold-embroidered uniform was new, setting off his recently acquired medal and sash to dazzling effect. The major spoke first, a hint of intoxication slurring his words.
"Count, is this way of drinking your genius invention? Rum with iced fruit juice—it's wonderfully refreshing, like a cool mist."
"Someone once told me that if I'd switched trades and become an innkeeper, I'd have been even better at it than fighting heathens." Vince gestured for a servant to bring over the shaker and well-chilled kvass. "Tell me about natural philosophy, sir."
"Natural philosophy? My dear Fananovoua, I am no doctor or scholar. I am a soldier who wins God's favor through battle—just like you."
"No? But you heard Pilar. If studying how to kill a man faster with bullets and swords counts as natural philosophy, then surely how to kill a hundred men with one cannon shell belongs to the same realm."
"You mean the Paulo Cannon?" Alfonso chuckled. "That is indeed a delightful thing—like your wine—as long as you don't happen to be standing in front of the muzzle."
"Then tell me about it."
"Tell you what, exactly? The Paulo Cannon, or Paulo the cannon-founder?"
"Tell me everything, dear Alfonso. Everything you know." Vince pressed a large glass of cocktail into his hand. "These things fascinate me. Who doesn't want to achieve more glory on the battlefield?"
"Speaking of this Señor Paulo, he really is mysterious..." Alcohol had loosened Major Alfonso's tongue.
"Still mysterious, even after you've worked with him?"
"Of course—I have indeed worked with him. But to tell the truth, this is a man whose inner thoughts you can never discern. Perhaps he really is as pious as the priests claim—so devoted he cares nothing for the outside world."
"Indeed, this wondrous person didn't even attend the triumph. Giving up such great honor is truly perplexing."
"He doesn't care about that. Besides, shortly after returning to Manila, he boarded that fast sloop and left again. Except for the Governor, no one in the Philippines knows where he went. He does whatever he wants, and His Excellency always expresses unconditional support—Señor Paulo is now the Governor's closest friend." A slightly lewd smile curled at the corner of the Major's mouth. "But every time he comes back, there are always surprising new tricks unveiled. Just wait and see."
At that very moment, hundreds of nautical miles from Manila, chants and curses in a mix of Spanish and local dialect echoed across the desolate west coast at the northern tip of Samar Island.
Three sailing vessels of various sizes lay at anchor off this uninhabited coastline of dangerous reefs and shoals. On the quarterdeck of a small lateen-rigged sloop, Evaristo Okamoto watched the coolies struggling through waist-deep water. The scorching sun and the overseers' relentless whips drove them onward, tottering yet straining with all their strength to haul ropes that chafed their skin raw.
Out on the shoal lay a massive tangle of debris. Rusted iron ribs, encrusted with dead marine organisms, jutted chaotically into the air. Clinging to them in fragments were plates whose original color could no longer be discerned.
The wreckage of the Type 901 gunboat Nongchao—which had capsized and sunk during Operation Hunger after encountering a typhoon off Samar's west coast—had been pushed onto the shore by a recent storm.
Evaristo Okamoto had become intensely interested in Operation Hunger. From Spanish prisoners ransomed back to Manila, and from his own "fiancée," he had gleaned many details of the operation—including the fact that an Australian ship had gone down at Samar.
To him, any ship was a treasure trove, especially for someone who had arrived in this time-space with nothing. He had immediately brought men to Samar and soon located the spot where the Nongchao had sunk.
But thorough disposal by the Navy had left him helpless before the wreckage. The hull rested on underwater sands and reefs, still three or four meters down even at low tide. Massive breaches in the hull made clear that the structural components had been deliberately destroyed. With the technical resources at his disposal, salvage was impossible—and even if he could raise it, the thing had no repair value, nor did he possess the capability to repair it.
After several exploratory dives using a primitive diving bell, Evaristo Okamoto had come up with nothing useful. He could only return in frustration. Yet the Nongchao lying in Samar's waters remained an obsession.
He had no doubt these so-called Australians had destroyed their own ship—but the destruction had been carried out after the vessel capsized and sank. That meant the dismantling couldn't have been truly thorough. In other words, this ship was still a treasure trove—provided he could reach it.
Paulo-Hale's salvage conditions were severely unfavorable. He had no diving equipment, and using a primitive diving bell permitted only very limited action.
But God seemed to favor his enterprise. Shortly after a recent typhoon passed, a ship passing near Samar Island brought news: the wreck of a strange large ship had been pushed onto the beach by the storm—and its ribs were made of iron.
Hearing this, Evaristo Okamoto set out at once with a fleet. He brought hundreds of coolies, massive quantities of rope, winches, and blocks—even a complete blacksmith's shop. He was prepared to thoroughly dismantle the wreckage on Samar Island and see exactly what he could extract from it.