The Missionary (4 page)

“It’s been decided, son,” Len said.

“You’re coming, right?” Nick clapped his friend’s shoulder. “You can be our security.”

“I guess I am.” Stone pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to ignore the roiling in his belly, the warning bells in his head.

The problem was, he’d been in the Navy for almost ten years. The first lesson he learned, on his first combat mission, was to always,
always
listen to the warnings in his gut.
 

*
 
*
 
*

Stone parked his Monte Carlo at the rear of the church parking lot, heaved his black duffel bag from the back seat, and locked his car. Once approval from Pastor Len had been granted, the trip had come together quickly. Stone had put in his opinions, and on most matters, Nick listened. Still, he’d voiced his disapproval and worry at every step of the way, but no one heeded him. They had the bone in their teeth, and they weren’t letting go.
 

Stone had nearly gone postal when he saw Wren’s name on the list of students. He’d gone so far as to corner her the day before, when the group was meeting for one final discussion of the itinerary.
 

“Don’t go, Wren.
Please
,” he’d said. “There are other ways to do good in this world.”

Wren had stared back at him, seeming perplexed. “Stone…I’m going. I’ve paid—”

“I’ll refund your money myself, right now. I’ll write you a check, pull the cash from the ATM. Just…” he wiped his hand down his face and started over. “Wren, listen. I have a bad feeling about this. This trip isn’t…I—none of you understand what you’re getting yourselves into.”

“And you do?” She had propped her fist on her hip, eyes narrowed.

“Yes!” He’d heard the word burst from him, vehement and too loud. “Yes, I do. There was a mission…look, I can’t get into that, it’s classified. Just please listen to me. Don’t go. I’m begging you,
please
…stay home.”

A myriad of emotions crossed Wren’s expressive face. “Stone, I know you mean well. I do. But this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do some real good in the world, to change lives and save souls. I
have
to go. If there’s risk involved, I’m willing to accept it. I trust that God will protect me.”

Stone had wanted to scream. Instead, he’d groaned, spinning in place and pressing the heels of his palms into his eye sockets. “A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get yourself raped and killed, you mean.”

“Aren’t you exaggerating a little bit?” Wren had come up behind him and touched his arm.
 

“No. If anything, I’m understating how dangerous this trip is.”

“I can’t back out now, Stone. I
won’t
.”

Wren had walked away without a backward glance, leaving Stone to watch her go.
 

Now Stone found himself approaching the two church vans that would take the group to the airport, his heart heavy and his stomach turbulent. Most of the group was already in place, stacking their suitcases and duffel bags in a pile in front of the vans. They were chattering excitedly, a group of eighteen evenly divided by gender. Most were college students, with a handful of high school seniors tossed in. Wren was already bouncing on her toes, full of energy, spouting facts about Manila that she’d researched over the last few days.
 

This trip was a bad idea. Stone knew it. At least he would be there to make sure Wren stayed safe.
 

He packed the pile of luggage into the backs of the white Econoline vans while Nick did a head count against the roster. After the last few stragglers showed up, Nick drove one van, and Stone the other. Aside from the eighteen students, there was Nick, Amy, Jimmy, Stone, and three other non-staff adults, parents of the high school seniors on the trip.
 

All throughout the trip to the airport, boarding, and the flight, Stone’s worry increased. It wasn’t helped by the fact that he was returning to Manila.
 

As he dozed in his window seat and fell deeper into sleep, the dream-memory sunk its claws into him, and he was helpless to stop it.

*
 
*
 
*

Humidity was like a blanket, smothering him in sweat and heat. It would’ve been more bearable had he not been in full tactical gear. Par for the course though, and nothing he couldn’t handle.
 

It was better than being cold, if you asked him.
 

They’d infiltrated from the sea, swimming from a blacked-out freighter to shore, more than a mile in full gear. The target was a cluster of shanties in the middle of a wilderness of makeshift dwellings. It was a damned effective disguise, putting their base of operations in the middle of the slumtown. They could operate in secrecy, right out in the open. No one would say anything, because they were all too busy scrabbling to stay alive.
 

The mission was to take down a ring of sex traffickers and drug smugglers. The ring was small in terms of numbers of members, but they moved huge amounts of product, both chemical and human. They were brutal, organized, and effective. Local authorities were terrified of them. No one would touch them.
 

Except Stone and his men. It was a mission unofficially sanctioned by the US government, the kind of mission that you had to volunteer for, and for which you wouldn’t draw official pay.
 

Stone had seen the files. The photos of girls no more than seven or eight, beaten, forced into addiction to heroin, and sold into sexual slavery. Sixteen year old girls sold by their own families for paltry sums. Twenty-year olds kidnapped right off the street, found dead months later, raped and beaten into something unrecognizable as human. Most of the victims were Filipino, locals. Part of the massive South Pacific sex trade.

But—and this was the reason Stone and his men were silently sneaking through the midnight shadows—there were increasingly common cases of American tourists disappearing in the shantytowns. Some had been found dead—brutalized and viciously used, like the locals—but most had never turned up. There had been others, too, not just Americans. Canadians, Brits, Aussies, Germans. Young women from all over the world, traveling through Manila and vanishing without a trace. The clincher came when Lisa Johnson went missing—the nineteen year old daughter of Senator Alan Johnson, who just happened to be part of a spec-ops oversight committee. The senator gathered his enormous bundle of strings and pulled them all.
 

Find her
, came the orders.
Do whatever you have to do, but find Lisa and get her out at all costs.
 

Sources were pressed for information, a location was determined, and a plan came together. A two-fireteam unit swam ashore in the dead of a July night. Even then, Manila wasn’t asleep. But, there were shadows enough for Stone and his men to slip unnoticed deeper and deeper into the shantytown slumbering beneath the shadowy bulk of Smokey Mountain, the smoldering, two-story high hill of trash that was Manila’s sordid claim to fame.

Stone, running point, came to a stop outside a shanty identical to the millions of others. There was a slab of corrugated iron for the roof, broken hunks of plywood and stacks of crumbling bricks comprising the walls. It was so tiny he couldn’t have stood upright in it, and probably could have touched all four walls standing in the center, but it was home to a family. Or the others were. This particular shanty was a little different. It had a door, for one thing. And if you looked carefully, you’d see evidence of more careful and skillful construction.
 

Stone pointed to the door, and then glanced at Benny, who consulted a handheld GPS unit and gave a thumbs up. Stone gestured at another team member, Blake, who examined the door and picked the lock open within seconds, shoving the door open with one hand. Stone rolled through the opening in a tactical crouch, HK MP5SD-N at the ready. His night vision goggles revealed a figure in the small room, and he had a matter of milliseconds to determine if the target was hostile or not.
 

The AK in his hands made the decision easy. He tugged the trigger twice, and the suppressed automatic submachine gun fired with a whispering click of a bolt. The tango dropped to the ground in a heap.
 

And then all hell broke loose.
 

AK fire racketed in the tiny space, shouts in Filipino. Shouts in English.
 

“Ambush!”
 

Benny was next to Stone, MP5 clicking, tangos dropping. The shanty was a front, leading to a maze of interconnected buildings. An AK-47 blasted, and Benny dropped, dead. Stone gave the order to retreat, but the street behind them was already bathed in the blood of his fireteam.
 

There was only Blake, Stone, and Nancy—Jimmy Naninsky—left. They were cut off from the street by the blaze of suppressing fire.
 

Blake had the door to the street open and was picking off muzzle-bursts with unerring and methodical accuracy. Nancy covered Stone, offering suppressing fire as Stone tried to come up with a plan that would get his remaining three men home alive. The second fireteam was in place still, covering the extraction zone a few miles north. But Benny, Dozens, and Zane were all down. Dozens and Zane hadn’t had a chance, mown down from behind at the initial onslaught of the ambush.
 

Half his men.
 

Friends, men he’d served with for the last five years. Men with families.

Stone pushed those thoughts aside and focused on the problem at hand. He reached for a flashbang, pulled the pin, and tossed it through the entryway. It went off with a deafening bang and a disorienting flash of light, and shouts told Stone he’d bought them time. Nancy was already through and covering the door, so Stone loped in, dropped the first three tangos in view, bam-bam-bam. Blake came next, leap-frogging to the next doorway, kicking it in with a boot next to the handle.
 

It caved in, revealing half a dozen terrified girls, all naked and starvation-skinny, huddling on the floor. A tango had one in a hostage-hold, his arm around her throat and a gun to her head. Stone didn’t hesitate: a single full metal jacket slug entered the tango’s forehead and exited in a spray of gore. The girl slumped to the dirt floor, sobbing silently. Blake herded the girls through the open doorway and out into the street, rejoining Stone and Nancy as they leap-frogged through the maze of connected shanties. They found a few clusters of girls, and set them free. They burst through another closed door, surprising a young man in the act of raping a girl no more than fourteen. He had an automatic pistol in one hand, and as Nancy burst through the door, he lifted it and fired blindly. Nancy dropped him with two slugs through the skull, but took a round to the knee in return.
 

Stone felt something stinging his eyes, and wiped blood away with his gloved hand; a ricochet had grazed his forehead. He ignored the sting and shoved the dead man away from girl, cursing under his breath when he saw the ragged ricochet-hole piercing her throat.
 

Through another doorway, moving blindly, hoping to find an exit to the street. Another group of naked, terrified girls. Then, in a cell in the floor, dug into the dirt and covered over with a thick piece of sheetrock, a group of Caucasian girls. Seven of them, blond and brown hair and blue eyes and green, naked, dirty, blood-crusted, beaten. As he lifted them from the cell, Stone heard a laugh and the thump of something heavy hitting the dirt. He rolled to one side and saw the grenade.
 

He lunged to his feet, shoved Blake and Nancy through the doorway, shielding the rescued girls with his body as the grenade detonated. He felt the explosion first, a crumping pressure, then heard it, a sound so loud his hearing popped. And then he felt rockets of agony burst through him, fires burning in his leg. His thigh was exploding, giving way, but he couldn’t fall. Wouldn’t.

Stone clutched the doorway, his MP5 held in one hand, peering through the mask of blood across his face. He saw a short, squat form, and unleashed a hail of lead. The body twisted and fell, and Stone pushed through the pain, watched the girls scrambling to their feet, watched Nancy wind a belt around his knee.
 

He was dizzy and disoriented, and he knew he had to do something, but couldn’t remember what. He felt something happening to him, glanced down to see Blake wrapping a bandage around his thigh. His leg was a ruin. It was bad. He knew it was bad. Nothing to be done now, though, except keep going.
 

One of the Caucasian girls was chattering in what sounded like German or a Slavic language, pointing at another door, and then to the floor. Blake, the only one uninjured, followed her and returned a few seconds later with another knot of naked, bloody, frightened girls. Few were older than eighteen. Among them, he saw the target, Lisa, a young blonde barely recognizable from the photo they’d been shown during the brief.
 

Around him, the maze of shanties burned. Voices yelled. Screamed. Stone shuffled behind the now-sizable group of girls, limping as he tried to avoid putting weight on his destroyed left thigh. A jagged shard of shrapnel was embedded in the muscle, shifting with every step, causing pain so fierce Stone could barely see through the blurry haze.

He couldn’t stop, though. He heard voices behind them, caught enough of the Filipino to know those approaching weren’t coming to help.
 

Run.
 

He pushed the girls ahead of him, pushed at Nancy and Blake. Run. There were too many.
 

They navigated the maze slowly, following the doorways, ducking through curtains of beads, and then they were out in the dim charcoal light of pre-dawn, three bloody men in tactical gear and at least a dozen naked teenaged girls.