Rebound (24 page)

The weapons pickup was the most frequent disaster point. So long as the assassin or mercs had no weapons, they could be charged
only with conspiracy, which tends to be a vague charge and hard to prove in a court of law. Once the hit man had a military-grade
weapon in his possession, he was almost automatically guilty of whatever the authorities wanted to charge him with. It’s hard
to get anyone to believe that you were only after ducks with a self-propelled antitank grenade.

These things were passing through Dartley’s mind as he and Fu sized each other up over the gourmet food. Dartley was starving,
after only one duck embryo and an afternoon of sex. The grilled meat was a welcome change from his Balbalasang diet of lechon
rice—pork and vegetables over a bowl of boiled rice.

“I’m a reasonable man, Mr. Tompkins,” Fu told Dartley. “Single weapons cost more than if you buy in quantity, as you well
know. But since you come recommended to me by Mr. Malleson, I will see that you have good value. A 60 mm mortar for $4,000.
An M79 40 mm grenade launcher for $1,200. An M72 light antitank weapon for $2,500. An M60 7.62 mm machine gun for $3,300 or
a 50-caliber machine gun for $3,000. I can let you have M60 ammo at 30 cents a round, 50-caliber at $2.75 a round, or 60 mm
mortar rounds at $430 each, no limit per customer. You won’t beat my prices anywhere in the Pacific Basin.”

Dartley smiled. “It sounds reasonable.” He
didn’t give a damn what the weapons cost, as long as they were in excellent condition and he could get what he wanted, but
he had to play the game and bargain. Otherwise Fu probably wouldn’t take him seriously enough to deliver quality goods.

“Where can you arrange delivery?” Dartley asked at one point.

Fu shook his head and waved his hands. “Metro Manila only. Once, only a couple of years ago, I could have delivered to you
anywhere you liked in the Philippines. Now the rebels control everything outside the cities and big towns, and those cities
and towns are controlled by pro-government militias who are often as bad as or worse than the communist guerrillas. This country
is coming apart at the seams, Mr. Tompkins,” Fu said, using the alias Dartley had given him.

“I’ll take delivery in Metro Manila,” Dartley offered, pleased at the fact that Fu had made no effort to find out where he
was headed.

After he left Fu he found the girl, still shopping. There was a pair of shoes she absolutely had to have, which set Dartley
back close to another hundred.

“All the local militias are financed by the Velez family,” Eduardo Cristobal said. “They have to put on a show when he arrives.
Their colonels will be knocking on his door tomorrow, begging for money.”

Joker Solano looked annoyed. “I thought we were in NPA country. When the New People’s Army broke me out, I was taken here,
and
I remember you saying, Ka Eduardo, that government soldiers never dared come to these parts in threes or fours—they had to
travel in platoons or even companies. Now not even the pigs and chickens are safe on the roads with all these truckloads of
men tearing around.”

“You have to understand, Ka Joker,” Froilan Quijano put in, the old Party organizer playing a peacekeeping role, “that Happy
Man needs to feel that he is safe here. There are some things that you and Ka Eduardo may not know. You’ve heard, of course,
about the attempts on Happy Man’s life recently, first in Laguna and then up in the Luzon mountains, at Balbalasang. The newspapers
blamed the NPA for these attacks, so now the pro-government militias here feel that they have to show Happy Man that they
can protect him from us. What you may not know is this: Happy Man is responsible for all those U.S. servicemen’s deaths.”

Cristobal’s jaw dropped. “That wasn’t us?”

“We got blamed for them in the press,” Quijano said, “but the government and military know better. Happy Man was, and still
is, hoping to gather anti-American support around him by taking it away from us. Many people who don’t like the Americans
don’t want communists, either. Velez thinks they will put him in power. If you think about it, it does not make a lot of sense—like
some other things that happen politically. People use their hearts more than their heads. But Happy Man has some problems.
The army generals don’t like him, but a lot of the junior officers do. Building up his local militias is Happy Man’s way of
telling the generals not
to mess with him. Because of us, the regular army cannot afford to clash with pro-government anticommunist local militias,
no matter how corrupt they are. So Velez is working up anti-American sentiment. And the ones trying to kill him are the Americans.
The government believes it’s a renegade American serviceman from Clark or Subic Bay, but Happy Man thinks it’s the CIA. The
New People’s Army didn’t mount the attacks on his guards at Balbalasang. I’ve heard it was a CIA team of American Indians
disguised as mountain tribesmen. They found arrows in some of the bodies.”

Cristobal’s eyes were as round as saucers.

Joker was less interested in Party headquarters gossip. “All this doesn’t put Velez in any better light as far as I’m concerned.
He deliberately let the NPA take the blame for those Americans he killed, and plainly he aims to climb to power over our backs.
Froilan, what’s the Party attitude to Happy Man?”

“Hands off him for now,” Quijano said firmly. “We have no illusions about him, but as long as he continues to do things that
work in our favor in the long run, we must let him be or even protect him if necessary.”

Joker cursed. “Very well, we won’t touch Velez, himself, but he has to know who controls these sugarcane fields. We can’t
afford numerous firefights with the militias in case they send regular troops in to support them. All the same, we can’t place
a piece of Soviet military antisatellite equipment here in the fields if the Velez private army can go where it wants. We
have to show Happy Man that we are in control and that he
must keep his dogs on a leash. Ka Eduardo, those three hacienda managers you have been complaining about, does Happy Man know
them personally?”

Cristobal smiled. He was getting to like Joker Solano a little. He picked his M16 off the table as he rose to his feet. “They
are going to be a big loss to him.”

The little girl opened the door and looked up at the two men standing there.

One of them said to her, “Tell your father his friends are here.”

She ran into the house, leaving the door a little ajar, calling to her father.

“What friends?” he asked grumpily.

“I didn’t ask them their names,” she said.

He was tired and not too happy to have to entertain someone or have problems from work brought to his home. He opened the
door and saw two men, neither of whom he had seen in more than a year, when they had gone underground with the guerrillas.
He saw the revolvers in their hands and the amused looks in their eyes. They had tricked him. They knew they had won. He tried
to slam the door in their faces.

The revolvers blasted.

He felt the hot lead eating into his guts and chest, lost his balance, and staggered backward. He saw his little daughter
and tried to shout at her to run, but no sound came before his face hit the floor.

He believed in being an old-style hacienda manager who went about on horseback, a braided
leather whip in hand. Any worker who talked back felt the leather snap near enough to his head, and if he was fool enough
to persist, he felt that leather cut his skin or, at least, raise a heavy welt. A Colt .45 automatic pistol fitted snugly
in a holster on his right hip, ready to settle any arguments the whip couldn’t win.

He went on horseback where managers who relied on jeeps could not go. When he was young, there was no place on any of the
plantations where the workers were safe from him. In recent years he had slowed some, but not so much that when any real trouble
was brewing, they still sent for him. The Velez family knew he stirred the fear of God into the lazy peasants and that many
a man who had stood up to him now lay in an unmarked grave. The young workers giving trouble today had grown up in terror
of his name. In a funny way this was what had kept him alive. None of them cared to pick on him.

But he was getting on in years, his children were grown, and his wife wanted to move to Bacolod, where two of their married
daughters lived. He made promises and kept postponing things—he knew he would never go. What would he do there? No one would
know him… back out of his way… bow to him… tremble when he spoke to them. It would be no life at all for him there.

He looked at the youth riding the carabao in from the fields and checked the huge, lumbering animal to see if he could find
any fault. The youth looked directly back at him in the
insolent way of so many young people now. This boy’s father would have bent over almost double in respect, had he not died
some years ago in a labor dispute.

The hacienda manager’s hand dropped to his Colt as the youth on the carabao suddenly swiveled a shotgun barrel at him. He
had the pistol more than half out of the holster when the load of heavy shot caught him full in the face and upper chest.
The shot had not spread thin, and the closely spaced metal fragments ripped the features from the front of his skull and tore
the skin from his shoulder and chest, leaving him flayed, bleeding, red meat.

He toppled sideways off his horse as it bolted from the noise of the gun and stinging impacts of some stray shots in its hide.
His left leg caught in the stirrup, and he was dragged along the ground, dust coating the grisly, bloody mess that had once
been his face.

The youth slipped off the carabao’s back to pick up the .45 pistol the manager had dropped. Taking this and the shotgun, he
ran down a narrow side path through the sugarcane, leaving the carabao to find its own way home.

Eduardo Cristobal was of the opinion that an NPA regional commander like himself should, every now and then, let the people
see him in action. Such things made them respect a guerrilla commander. Besides, he missed the life of everyday action he’d
had when he was a regular fighter. Nowadays he spent most of his time trying to keep track of things and arguing with people.
He would go out on this one himself
and send Happy Man a personal message by doing so.

Not that Cristobal had any strong thing against Happy Man that he didn’t have against every wealthy plantation owner. The
Velez family was rich, the Cristobal family was poor. In Negros Occidental that told the whole story. A man was born one or
the other, poor or rich, and he died that way. There had been no social change down here in the sugar country for generations,
and there wouldn’t be in the future, except at the end of a gun. It took an outsider like Joker Solano to come to this place
and see things clear. Joker did not give a shit for Happy Man one way or the other. Joker’s parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents
had never labored as near slaves for the Velez family. Joker’s children, if he had any, would never cut sugarcane. Cristobal
did have children, and unless he did something about it, his children would cut sugarcane—for the Velez family, and maybe
their children after them. Unless Cristobal did something about it.

So far he had gained nothing by violent means. But Froilan had explained to him that right up until the time the party got
everything, it would have to put up with having nothing. The rot had set deep within the capitalist system. Like a tall tree
with a rotten core, it would look like it might stand forever, until the fresh wind of change suddenly snapped its weakened
trunk and the whole tree came crashing down. Froilan had a way of expressing himself that made difficult things easy to understand,
and he
didn’t mind Cristobal repeating what he said and then stealing credit for it.

Cristobal took two men with him. Right about now the first hacienda manager should have died in his home, having quit work
early, as usual. The second should have died on horseback as he took the animal to drink in the stream, which he always did
at this time of day, being a methodical and inflexible man. Cristobal’s quarry would be checking that none of his foremen
had cheated him. He was the kind of hacienda manager who worked late for the pleasure of it and kept men from their families
until he felt ready to let them go, without paying them a peso extra for this time. Cristobal knew where to find him—down
by the machinery barns.

The regional commander and his two fellow guerrillas waited by the roadside until a tractor came along. The driver stopped
when Cristobal held up his hand. All three men stood on the fixtures at the back of the tractor, and it moved forward again.
The worker at the wheel did not know what they wanted, but he knew who they were and he asked no questions.

Other workers in the yards were startled to see three men with M16s as the tractor passed them. When they saw who the three
men were, it was as if the workers had seen a mirage and now it was gone. They went about their work or whatever they were
doing as if this momentary hallucination had never taken place. Some workers did not even look. To them guerrillas were invisible.
So, too, were the local militias and anything else that could quickly bring harm down on them and their families.

Looking over the tractor driver’s shoulder, Cristobal spotted the man he was looking for. The hacienda manager was waving
his fist at nine or ten cowed-looking workers. Cristobal had heard that equipment maintenance was an obsession with this man.
A Velez goon, armed with an M16, sat at the wheel of a jeep.

Cristobal nodded to his two comrades and pointed to the manager’s bodyguard. The manager was looking toward the tractor now,
perhaps annoyed that its engine noise was drowning out his voice. The goon in the jeep gave the tractor a lazy look, like
a cat not bothering to chase a mouse.

The two guerrillas stepped off the back of the tractor. One fired a short burst from his M16. The bullets tore into the back
of the bodyguard, and his head flopped sideways on the steering wheel. The second guerrilla covered the manager and workers,
while the first walked over to take the guard’s rifle. The manager was not armed, and the workers were not protecting him.
Cristobal stepped down from the tractor, stopped nearby, and handed his M16 to the man who had shot the guard.