Sudden Threat (24 page)

“They got Doc and Hewit!” he screamed above the roar of the UH-60 blades as he ran from the door. Zachary, his back to the helicopter, saw three rebels spring from the doorway, chasing Fraley. It was Zachary who had the moral decision.

He was a decent man, so there was no real hesitation. He crouched in a good firing position and fired past Fraley’s wide eyes at the three insurgents. Fraley rambled past Zachary and joined the increasing population on the helicopter. Zachary fired without hesitation, first selecting a target, then squeezing the trigger. He killed the rebels, who, like their countrymen across the heliport, were surprised by the armed opposition on the roof.

The soldiers quickly boarded the helicopter, their weight exceeding the load limit of the aircraft. The pilot gingerly adjusted the controls so the aircraft slowly lifted off the heliport, obviously straining under the excessive weight. He pitched the nose forward and climbed slowly into the air.

The door from the JUSMAG opened with a slam. Colonel Mosconi, the Air Force doctor, fell forward onto the hot cement. He was bleeding badly from his left shoulder and held a pistol in his right hand. He crawled on all fours, craning his neck to see the helicopter. The cement burned his hands and the pistol smashed his fingers each time he slapped his hand forward to move another centimeter toward the helicopter.

“Cover me!” Rockingham yelled, jumping from the barely airborne aircraft.

Fraley reached across the aircraft, grabbing Rockingham, and screamed, “No! Leave him, or we’ll never make it!”

Rockingham punched Fraley in the face, smash-ing his nose and knocking him out.

Sprinting to Mosconi, the XO slid under him and lifted him into a fireman’s carry, feeling Mosconi’s blood oozing down his back. He took long, heavy steps back toward the aircraft, as more rebels began spilling onto the rooftop. Flipping Mosconi onto the commander’s lap, Rockingham winced in pain as the Black Hawk pulled away. He held on to a metal tube that served as a seat frame, his legs hanging out of the aircraft.

Zachary had both arms around Mosconi, who lay unconscious and maybe dead. With one hand, he grabbed Rockingham’s arm to give him support.

Rockingham looked at him with the blank eyes of a wounded deer. He knew then that the XO had been hit in the back with a bullet. Bullets zipped past and into the frame of the laboring aircraft. Sergeant Spencer grabbed Rockingham’s other arm. Soon, both arms went limp, and Rockingham’s eyes retreated into a world where there would be no pain. His body became deadweight against the pull of Zachary and Spencer.

With sudden alarm and shock, they realized their friend was dead. Hanging on, Spencer and Garrett looked at each other, trying to hold back their emotions. But they were only human.

Uncertainly, the pilot banked the machine hard to the left, diving below the level of the building to avoid the fire, and sped low along Roxas Boulevard with too much weight and too little time. They headed to the only safe place for an American in the Philippines—Garrett’s Gulch.

CHAPTER 41

Mindanao Island, Philippines

Chuck Ramsey and his Special Forces team had been on the run for four days. The steep, jagged mountains had proved both a blessing and an enemy. Even these hardened men were having problems sustaining the rate of march necessary to elude Talbosa’s Abu Sayyaf cell.

Ramsey stopped and looked down into the steep ravine.
Can we make it?
A few days ago, he would not have doubted it. Today, his men standing in single file behind him, panting, he was unsure.

“Take five, men,” Ramsey told them. Despite their exhaustion, they moved to either side of their route and turned outward, each man taking a knee. They pulled their canteens out of their pouches and drank heavily. Every man was dehydrated. The heat had intensified during the last four days. The only respite was a gully washer, as Ramsey had called it. The near-monsoon-level rains had drenched his team and the Japanese man for hours, making them cold and miserable through the night. But the next day had brought forth the same burning, searing sun, and soon they were longing for the cool rain again. They needed water badly.

Ramsey knew he had to find a river for his men to refill their canteens. They still had plenty of water purification tablets to make the river water acceptable. More importantly, though, they needed to find a way to establish communications. He felt like he was carrying a deep secret that the world needed to know. He had the key to something, he was not quite sure what. While he had grown to tolerate Abe, he seriously doubted the man’s story. Although it was plausible that the United States would be rearming the Armed Forces of the Philip-pines, he doubted that they would fund Japanese factories to do so. He had to make contact with somebody who could relay the message.

Anybody!

Kneeling on both knees, he leaned back, stretching his weary back muscles. His sixty-pound ruck was beginning to feel like an appendage to his body. He didn’t bother to take it off. To put the weight back on again would somehow be demoral-izing.

He gazed over some scrub. The ravine was about a sixty-degree drop with no trails. High tropical trees gave way to dense undergrowth and rocks. The terrain pitched deep into a narrow bottom that ran east toward the ocean.

Ramsey grabbed his two-quart canteen and took a long pull. The water was warm.
Must be a hundred degrees out here.
He was right. As he drank, he could feel his body rehydrate. Immediately his pores spewed forth sweat in an attempt to cool his scorching skin, only to have the beaming sun lick the moisture away.

Looking over his shoulder, he saw Benson turning his canteen up to the Japanese man’s mouth. Water spilled over the edges of his dry, chapped lips as he gulped. Earlier, he had his men remove the tape from Abe’s eyes and mouth. It only made sense. He was a healthy, but gentle man. He would do them no harm and would not last a day in the jungle if he escaped.

Abe’s story was unbelievable. Ramsey asked him repeatedly if they really were manufacturing tanks and helicopters in the plant. He always responded that they were indeed. Abe insisted that the American government was footing the bill, as they had done for Japan’s defense needs for so many years.

But the rub, according to Abe—an obviously bright man—was that America was doing this because they needed help in the Global War on Terror and wanted Japan to maintain stronger defenses. To Ramsey, it made no sense. Tanks and helicopters were not the best tools of the trade in fighting an idea such as radical Islam. The question Ramsey considered was, Why would the Japanese be building and stockpiling weapons on Mindanao?

In the Philippines?

Ramsey looked at Abe, kneeling in the thick jungle vines, looking exhausted with his eyes fixed on the ground at his feet. He had kind eyes and a smooth face. His hands were not the hands of a warrior. Rather, they were soft and delicate like those of a lawyer or executive. Ramsey had made him burn the orange jump suit and given him one of his own extra uniforms. It was a bit large, but served the purpose. Abe, in his running shoes and camouflaged jungle fatigues, reminded him of a soldier with some sort of foot ailment who had received a “no physical training profile” from the doctor. But Abe had proven to be in excellent condition. His stamina was lacking, but he could keep up with the group.

From the rear of the patrol, Benson came slithering through the elephant grass quickly. He carried a concerned look in his eyes.

“Sir, we’ve got movement to our rear,” he said. Immediately, the team fanned into an L- shaped ambush, with Ramsey at the corner so he could control any engagement. Crouching low in the two-meter-high elephant grass, he could still see nearly a hundred meters along the path they had bored through the dense rain forest.

He saw it. There was movement toward them, following the trail they had inadvertently made. Ramsey could see no one but Eddie, who was kneeling and watching next to him. He peered through his binoculars, seeing only the undergrowth move. As his rising adrenaline level made his stomach twist into a knot, he felt a dry copper taste in the back of his mouth. He was tired. He was hungry. Perversely, he thought of all of the Vietnam movies he had seen in which soldiers shot at water buffalo thinking they were enemy. While he did not expect any water buffalo that high in the rain forest, nothing could really have surprised him.

Eddie motioned to him for the binoculars. He had grown quite confident and comfortable with the group. He wanted to make a contribution and had done so on many occasions. While Chuck still painfully mourned the loss of his best friend, Ron Peterson, he was glad that Eddie had happened along. He handed the glasses to Eddie, who placed them to his eyes.

The standard plan for a hasty ambush was first to try to avoid detection. Chuck figured they would use silenced weapons to the fullest extent possible to avoid further detection. His least preferred option was a conventional, loud ambush. For sure, the patrol would be lethally compromised.

Chuck handled his father’s Navy SEAL “hush puppy” with ease, rolling it back in forth in his hand, venting some nervous tension. The Smith and Wesson Model 39 pistol was modified with a noise suppressor. Used by the SEALs in Vietnam to kill sentries and guard dogs, the weapon’s range was limited to 100 meters. But it was quiet.

The back of his throat was dusty.
Is it the Abu Sayyaf? They’ve been following us for days. Must be them. How many?
Silently, he wished for a water buffalo instead of what he thought was coming.

“Mamanua,” Eddie whispered, looking through the binos. Ramsey gave him a puzzled look. “Here,” he said, leaning over and pointing nearly eighty meters from their position. They were directly in the middle of the ambush cross fire, whoever they were. Moving his pistol to his left hand, Ramsey lifted the binos to his camouflaged face.

“What the—”

“Mamanua,” Eddie whispered again, covering Ramsey’s mouth. Three Mamanua tribal natives were stalking through the rain forest hunting wild pigs or monkeys. They were dark-skinned and wore colorful beaded skirts and necklaces. Each held a spear at shoulder level, ready to release on his prey. The natives were Negritos, black people who had immigrated from Malay to the Philippine Islands centuries ago, the first inhabitants of the archipelago. The Philippine government designated land, primarily rain forests not targeted for clear cutting, in which the tribal groups could operate with impunity. Such jungle woodlands were enclaves in time where progress had made no inroads.

The black tribesmen stalked carefully, one foot over the next, sensing something. Fifty meters. Could his men hold their fire? Ramsey looked at Eddie, who shook his head as if to say, “They are best left alone.” The lead Mamanuan looked through the bushes at him and raised his spear, preparing to hurl it forward. The others watched, lowering their spears.

He rifled the spear into the bush, not twenty meters from Ramsey’s crouched position. Ramsey closed his eyes, fearing that they had gotten one of his men. He heard a high-pitched yelping sound and saw the spear dancing in the tall grass. The natives hurried forward. Ramsey raised his “hush puppy,” prepared to engage. He felt Eddie lay his small, brown hand on his arm, holding him back.

The short black men, skin dry and whitish from the dust and heat, leaned over their prey, a wild boar, and quickly tied its feet together with hemp. They carried the black pig in the opposite direction, slung over their shoulders on a spear. As they were leaving, the lead native stopped, turned his head, stared directly into the bushes at Eddie and Chuck. He saw them, held the eye contact for a brief, knowing moment, then disappeared into the lush jungle.

Chuck lowered his pistol, comprehending that two cultures had just passed in the yellow-white Philippine sun. They had no interest in him, nor he they. Each had stared at the other, seeing a warrior of a different era. They were but mild curiosities to one another, each like a snake, harmless if unprovoked. Chuck saw in the man’s black face a sense of satisfaction and contentment. It was something more than just capturing dinner for his tribesmen. The look was the clear countenance of a simple life. Removed from the trials of government and international concerns, the Negrito seemed content with his lot. The Filipinos and peoples of other developing countries Chuck had served in, countries that had been touched by the prospects of unrealized modernization, seemed angry and hateful toward foreigners and one another.

Deciding he would contemplate the significance of his visual interchange with the Mamanuan tribesman later, he turned to more immediate problems.

CHAPTER 42

Ramsey’s most dominant thought was that in six more hours the helicopters would come. They could survive that long, for sure. He had to maneuver his team to the north of Cateel City, where the beach was wide and uninhabited. All around him, the sheer cliffs either dropped sharply into the water or gave way to beaches. The mountains reminded him of the Na Pali coast off the island of Kauai in Hawaii.

He motioned to his men to get moving with a pump of his clenched fist.

Looking to the east, he saw the ocean. Near the shore, the water was a tropical turquoise shade. Farther out, he could see a coral reef where waves tumbled harmlessly. Beyond the reef, the sea turned a deep, mystic blue. He knew the Philippine Trough was out there, reaching almost thirteen thousand meters into the core of the earth.
What a world,
he thought. Primitive tribesmen, deep oceans, tropical rain forests. The beach was as white as sugar, much like those in the Florida panhandle.

He looked grimly again at the difficult terrain that lay ahead. He knew that Talbosa’s men were only about an hour behind them. Every time his team moved, the Filipinos seemed to pick up on the scent. Only when they went into hiding did it seem as though they were secure. More than once, they had doubled back on their trail, setting up ambushes but not executing them. They were clearly outnumbered.