The Weapon (19 page)

He trusted the people who'd passed him to Abu Pula. They said he'd been on the right side in Af ghan i stan, against the Soviets. But the contact had gone through several hands since, ending with this goofy-looking kid. Who didn't impress him a hell of a lot, although he did know how to navigate jungle. The Chrono Crusade tee slipped through the dim like a dancer jerking to unheard music.

Hard to tell when your visibility was about twelve feet, but he'd thought the road had been running along the side of a ridge. This seemed to be proved true when fifty yards on from where they'd left the cars the ground plunged away into green like deep water. The rotting wet leaves of the jungle floor suddenly changed into a mud-slope. First he went down on his ass, then Kaulukukui rocketed by like he was on a toboggan. Sosukan watched them shoot past, eyes unreadable behind the reflectives, like some cracker prison guard.

At the bottom of the ravine huge dead boles lay rotting, interlaced over a motionless stream. Enormous live trees with gnarled, twisted buttress roots made their progress even more difficult. Some looked like they were covered in ghillie suits, the kind snipers wore. Thick vines snaked down from above to seek the soil. With the interlocking triple-canopy
over them it was like navigating the bottom of a long dark tunnel. The Filipino gave the ghillie trees a wide berth, as if they were poisonous. The fallen ones he ducked beneath, weaving and scrambling. Within minutes they were dripping with sweat, itching, and burning with stings and bites. He felt like he was fighting off narcolepsy. Also nervous: some of the rebel groups paid the bills with kidnapping. He wished he'd come armed. Still, you could do a lot with a good knife. He pulled out his GPS to check that it was working.

Sosukan took it out of his hands. Oberg was so astonished that at first he didn't react. Then he grabbed him and bent his wrist back. The kid dropped it, then stood there smirking, rubbing his wrist, but not going anywhere.

The Hawaiian came up. “What's going on?” Kaulukukui said.

“Bastard took my GPS. I got it back. But now he's not going anywhere.”

“He's got you by the balls, Obie. Better go along. Unless you want me to fuck him up?”

He didn't think that'd be productive, to show up at the rebel camp with a terrorized guide. He turned his head, spat, and handed it over. The kid grinned. He held it up, flourishing it like a trophy; opened it, removed the batteries; dropped them and the device into his pocket. Still without a word, he turned and headed off again, ducking and wriggling through vines and creeper that looked impenetrable. Oberg looked after him, frowning. There wasn't a path or any blazings he could see.

Kaulukukui plucked at his cheek, then held up a tiny green worm. “Careful of these guys. I run into them before out here. They burrow in. And don't let them get anywhere near your eyes.” He flicked it into his mouth. “Tasty, though.”

“Thanks, Sumo Man.”

 

Two hours after leaving the road, the jeeps, Lenson and Henrickson, Obie heard quiet voices. Sosukan dropped to a crouch beside a tree with yellow spikes growing out of the trunk, motioning for silence. The SEALs froze. The kid listened
for a few minutes. Then angled left, around whoever it was, before coming back to his original bearing.

An hour later they came out into what was less a clearing than just a huddle of thatched huts at the lowest level of the jungle. By then Oberg had no idea where he was, and Kaulukukui looked just as lost. His legs ached from scrambling up and down the ravines, he'd scraped the shit out of his back when he went down, and he was muddy. Leeches squished in his boots, but it felt good getting out in the field.

Kids scrambled in from all sides, pointing and staring. Roosters strutted. Bowlegged, skinny, long-muzzled brown dogs slunk away. As they hiked past nipa-and-bamboo huts he started cataloguing weapons. A worn-looking carbine. An old Vietnam-style M16. Two Garands, rusty. The rest were shotguns and antique bolt actions that might even be Japanese. He didn't see any grenades or RPGs, but you usually didn't even when they had them; insurgent groups kept their heavy stuff hidden except when the photographers came calling, for the same reason he himself would be burying the satellite phone the team had been issued until it was time to leave. Any machine guns would be dug in; they'd probably walked right past them during the approach.

Sosukan led them to a central hut and for almost the first time spoke, calling out in what Teddy guessed was Tausug. A voice answered, and Sosukan waved them in, smiling at Teddy.
Some time soon I'll wipe that smirk off your face,
he promised himself.

They arranged themselves around a smoky fire that made the heat twice as thick, but kept the gnats out. Blinking, he made out four guys across the flames. Weapons leaned against the woven bamboo walls. The men were all dark-haired, most with beards, but scraggly, spotty ones, like junior-high boys trying too soon. They wore a ragged assortment of what looked like Philippine Army camos and weirdly random civilian tees—one said “Ohio State National Championship Chess.” Some had black do-rags, others civilian ball hats worn backward hood-style. One sported a Che beret.

The Agency had briefed him. Rebels, of course, but they made their nut from kidnapping and quick raids. There was a connection between them and certain elements of the Army, some of whom seemed to be trying to set them up as informers against the MNLF, and the provincial governor, who was playing a deeper game.

But he wasn't interested in the politics.
“Salaam aleikum,”
he opened.

“As aleikum salaam.”

“Any of you guys speak English? Spanish?”

“We will speak English,” said one.

Oberg got out a bottle of Tanduay, the local rum, and offered it around. Politeness cost nothing, and people who owned little valued it most. They didn't take any, which he found interesting. But they brought out cold tea and sweetened rice. They sipped and nibbled, using their hands.

Oberg glanced at Sumo. He looked comfortable, even somnolent, sitting big-thighed on the platform with eyes half closed. So far this was all SOP. Linking up with your hosts. Taking each other's measure. Too bad they didn't drink, it usually warmed things up. He took out a pack of cigars, a pack of cards. “Guys like a smoke? Play some poker?”

Two looked interested, but when the guy in the beret frowned Teddy saw who was boss. “We don't smoke. Or drink. The Prophet forbids it.”

“Well, we certainly wouldn't want to go against the Prophet, peace be upon him.” He put away the tobacco, the cards, the rum. So much for warming things up.

Che Beret tilted forward. “It is said you want one of our boats. What for?”

Okay, they didn't want to do the traditional getting-to-know-you stuff. “Training our operational people.”

“You are Americans? CIA?”

“You don't need to know who we are. Do you?”

“You are right. We know. We have worked together before.”

Sumo said, “You actually have this boat?”

Che examined him. “You are very large. Where are you from?”

“Hawaii, man. So, the boat?”

“The boat, the boat. Friends have this boat.”

“Pirates?”

Che's lazy shrug was all his question deserved, Teddy guessed. “Fishermen. Sometimes, smugglers. Why not? But everybody wants something in this life. You want a boat. The question is, what will you pay?”

“We'd like to look it over,” Teddy told them. “Before we get into the price. If you don't mind.”

Che told Sosukan something in a peremptory tone. The kid, who'd been sitting a few feet off combing his hair, jumped up at once. One of the men around the fire handed him what Teddy was pretty sure was a Sten, a weapon he'd seen pictures of but never actually met. Sosukan racked the bolt casually. He slung it and motioned to them to follow.

 

The beach was another couple of hundred yards, through low brush with only a few palms clattering overhead now. Oberg could smell the sea, and it smelled good. Rock formations towered. This would be a good place to evade aerial surveillance. The automatic weapon he spotted set up under a palm-frond screen would discourage any helicopter that ventured too close, too.

The boat was moored in among the rocks, with fronds scattered over its decks. He followed the kid down to it and waded out through the warm water till they reached where it swung to lines leading shoreward. As he heaved himself over the gunwale something rustled in the fronds. He hoped not rats. He didn't like rats. They acted too human.

Around here the boats tended to be plywood and bamboo outriggers, and for a motor, a motorbike engine with a steel rod for a drive shaft, and a pathetic little hand-hammered propeller. This one was about forty feet long, fiberglass, camo-painted in brown and green, with three huge four-stroke Honda outboards bolted on at the stern like swollen
silver ticks. The SEALs had done a lot of VBSS—visit, boarding, search, and seizure—ops during the war. Teddy didn't figure this made him an expert, but he'd done over fifty boardings, sometimes two a day, and a goodly number had been on hostile decks. He tried to look at the boat from that point of view. It wasn't new, but it wasn't that old, either. Still it had seen hard use, with scuff marks along the gunwales, a crushed-in section aft bristling with yellow glass fibers beneath the gelcoat, and a charred place in the well that looked as if someone had built a cooking fire there. Small-caliber bullet holes were patched with what looked like shoe-repair glue.

He tapped the fuel gauge, then followed the gas lines to the motors. He turned the wheel to check the linkage. “Feels kind of loose.”

The kid said nothing. Kaulukukui came back from an enclosed cubby in the bow, dusting his hands. “Smells like they used it for the head. This the only boat you guys got, brother?”

The kid shrugged.

“Kind of small,” Kaulukukui added. “How far we got to go in this?”

“You know how far. And we don't need to discuss it in front of him.”

“All I'm wondering, has it got the range? Will it make it?”

“Hell, it's a boat,” Oberg said. “Let the commander tell us if it'll make it or not.” He glanced at Sosukan, who was watching casually. He strolled over, took the Sten away from him, and doubled his arm behind him. He applied a little pain. “My GPS,” he said into the kid's ear.

The boy hung from his hands. He tried to hook Teddy's leg. Oberg applied more force. Not too much, he didn't want to break anything.

“In my pocket,” Sosukan muttered.

“Good boy.” He patted him, dropped the magazine out of the Sten, ejected the one in the chamber, and stripped the cartridges out with his thumb.

Just five, all green with corrosion. He spun, throwing
them far out into the bay. Then handed it back and patted the boy's cheek.

Who turned a slow burning red, and gave him the sort of look Oberg remembered from his own adolescence. When the assholes who hung around his mother, hoping for a producer credit, for money, for whatever glamor they could rub off her, used to patronize him, or worse, tried to be his Daddy Buddy. And those had been the good ones.

Yeah. He remembered that look. The one that said,
I'll kill you, motherfucker. Just as soon as I get the chance
.

It was raining again. For the third day straight. Monty sat by the rutted mud track, jungle boots off, picking the leeches out from between his toes. They'd chowed down good, leaving bloody stains on his socks. He pinched the head off a fat slick brownish-red body, shuddered, and flicked it into the brush as the gate squealed down on rusty hinges.

The hinges were rusty, the gate was rusty, the old Chevy truck was orange with the rusty frost that grew in the tropic heat and rain the way mold grew on his shoes and scum on his teeth. He liked to keep himself clean, but it didn't seem possible here no matter how often he sponged off and brushed his teeth. He scratched his crotch. Something was growing there, too. But when the rebels—he was sure they were rebels, now, if not bandits—began skidding the cases over the tailgate, down to the churned-up ground, he stopped scratching.

It was “the delivery.” But what were they delivering? He'd asked Oberg twice, and both times gotten a half smile and a shrug.

In the days past they'd gotten to know the Filipinos a little. Some of them, at least; there seemed to be about sixty or seventy of them in the camp, counting women and kids. The
guy in the black beret, the closest thing they seemed to have to a leader, was Captain Abu. Abu stood beside him now, watching the others sweat around the tailgate. The squat smelly guy in the black head wrap was Izmin. Another, in a checkered Palestinian-style headdress, said very little; Monty thought he'd made out “Ibrahim” when they addressed him.

What was interesting was that he hadn't so much as spoken to a single woman so far. He'd caught glimpses of them on their way in and out along the trails, and going down to the sea. Sometimes they carried water, or what he guessed was food, tied in banana leaves. But they kept out of sight, and even when you caught a peep they drew cloths across their faces, though their brown, scab-pocked legs were bare from the knees down.

He flicked away the last leech, for now anyway, and reached for his wet socks. The long-haired teenager, Sosukan, and Izmin, and others Monty didn't know the names of, short wiry guys with knotted muscles from years of hard physical labor, were working on the crates, prying at the lids with knives and machetes. With a little dying shriek of reluctantly extracting nails, one came off.

The dark metal was coated with thick caramel grease. A rime sheened the wood, too. The weapons were scarred, heavy varnish over dark wood. They looked as if they'd been banged around in trucks, or thrown against something hard. Curved magazines covered the bottom of the box. A dusting of fine sand clung to them like brown sugar on fresh doughnuts.