Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 03 (56 page)

           
“I know I’m being too cautious,
Wilbur, but you’ve got to understand,” he said, “I need cooperation with the
other countries in the region before I commit American troops to fight the
Chinese. The world is touchier than a warm bottle of nitroglycerin right now.
If I send your bombers and fighters into the
Philippines
to square off against the Chinese, I need
to make sure that the American people realize we’ve exhausted every possible
option first ...”

           
“We’ve got the authorization you
need, sir,” Curtis said. “Second Vice President Samar.”

           
“
Samar
? What does he have to do with this. .. ?”
President Taylor asked. .

           
“
Samar
is a legitimate head of the government,
sir,” Curtis said. “He is also the governor of the
Commonwealth
of
Mindanao
, which is virtually a republic of its own.
His designated representative has formally requested assistance from the
United States
. That’s the legal spark we need to move.”
Danahall sniffed aloud and shook his head. “That’s not even close to the truth,
General . . .”

           
“It doesn’t have to be the absolute
truth, Dennis,” Curtis pointed out. “We’re not talking about a court case here—
we’re looking for justification to act, and we have it . . .”

           
“Unless
Samar
is dead,” the Vice President said, “in
which case Teguina retains control of the government and becomes de facto
governor of
Mindanao
. . .”

           
“Then we go in and rescue Samar,”
Curtis said. “Ambassador O’Day was given information on how to contact
Samar
—we’ll arrange for a special-operations
group to go in and get him out so he can make an announcement to the world that
he is resisting the Chinese.”

           
“But we need to be in a better
position to react when we get
Samar
out,
sir,” Curtis said to the President. “Sir, you have to order the Air Battle
Force into
Guam
and the Marines to deploy into the
Philippine Sea
, and have them prepare for action. If we
wait too long,
Samar
’s militia will collapse and
Mindanao
will fall—and then nothing short of a
nuclear war
will
dislodge the Chinese
from the
Philippines
.”

           
The President thought about this,
scanning the. faces around him; then, to General Curtis: “Okay, Wilbur, you got
the green light. Get the Air Battle Force moving to Andersen as quickly as
possible. You’re also authorized to deploy the Army and Marine Pre-positioned
Forces as you outlined earlier, and the destroyers and cruiser you mentioned
before can go on standby with their Tomahawk cruise missiles. I want no
offensive operations to begin without my specific approval. I want a full
briefing on
WINTER HAMMER
within the
hour, here ... Paul, get the ‘leadership’ together for the briefing, and try to
get as many of the allies notified as possible.”

           
“And the B-2 bombers that are part
of the Air Battle Force . . . ?”

           
The President scowled his
displeasure at the question, but replied, “That’s up to you and your people.
It’s bad enough I’m ordering bombers and cruise missiles into the area—I might
as well get all the protests packed into one order. If the crews have been
training with your Air Battle Force and if they know their shit, you’re
authorized to send them.”

Pujada Peninsula, southeastern
Mindanao The Philippines

Sunday, 2 October 1994, 0430
hours local

           
The only warmth United States Navy
Lieutenant Commander Paul “Cowboy” Bowman had felt in two days came from a tiny
burning white fuel tablet about the size of a quarter. He had lit the tablet with
a match from a waterproof container, placed the fuel tablet in a small
palm-sized aluminum cookstove from his survival kit, then folded a sheet of an
old Tagalog-language magazine cover into the shallow pan—he had lost the
original metal cup long ago during their mad races through the Mindanao
jungles— filled it with brackish water, and set it on the stove.

           
To Second Vice President Jose
Trujillo Samar’s surprise, the paper pan did not burn. “Why does the paper not
burn, Bowman?”
Samar
asked.

           
“Dunno,” Bowman replied. “Too cool,
I guess.” He dumped a packet of soup mix into the water and began stirring it
with a twig. This whole trip was actually too cool, Bowman thought. The escort
mission for the Air Force, the dogfights with the Chinks, getting his ass shot
down, splashing down in some unheard-of sea thousands of miles from home and
hundreds of miles from his carrier—at night, no less—being chased through the
swamps and jungles of the Philippines, running from Chinese infantry patrols,
losing his RIO.

           
And to top everything off, here he
was with the Second Vice President of the
Philippines
, a man who was legally the President of the
country, but was, in reality, on the run from his First Vice President.

           
Bowman had been pulled out of the
Celebes
by a fishing boat and delivered to
Samar
’s militia. His flight suit was crusted with
dried saltwater and mud and he was dog-tired. He’d been unable to sleep before
his patrol and had been awake nearly eighteen hours
before
his sortie, so he was going on almost three days of no
sleep, not to mention that his left elbow was probably broken when it hit the
cockpit sill on ejection. But that wasn’t the worst part of this excruciating
evasion. The worst part of the trip was lying in the sewn-up canvas bag a few
feet away from him—the body of Bowman’s
RIO
, Lieutenant Kenny “Cookin” Miller. Miller’s
parachute had apparently not fully opened, and by the time Bowman somehow found
him in the dark, warm water, he had either drowned or had died instantly after
hitting the water. He had dragged Miller’s battered body into
his
one-man life raft with him, ignoring
the horribly shattered neck and twisted limbs.

           
Bowman and Miller had been together
for three cruises, and the two bachelors had lots of shore-leave experiences.
They were more than shipmates or fellow crew dogs—they were friends. Bowman was
determined not to leave his friend alone, to be eaten by sharks in the
Celebes Sea
. As long as it was humanly possible, Bowman
was going to carry, drag, or push Miller’s body with him.

           
Since being retrieved from the
water, Bowman and his grisly companion had been on the move. They had been
transferred to two more fishing boats, then between several groups, once being
taken to shore. Their ID cards were taken immediately, he was kept tied up and
blindfolded, and he was warned that if he disobeyed any order or did anything
to arouse suspicion, he would be disposed of without remorse or hesitation.
They had traveled uphill for two days, moving only at night or in bad weather;
then they moved quickly downhill to the eastern shoreline—the sun was coming up
somewhere over
Samar
’s shoulder right now, in the direction of
the sea. They were kept hidden in mud pits, the hollowed-out insides of huge
tropical trees, or in rotting grass huts. Food was usually a muddy green banana
or some other undigestible piece of fruit, and rainwater.

           
Samar
himself had shown up only last night. His
militiamen treated him like Caesar. He held several military councils, speaking
Tagalog in low whispers.

           
Bowman thought General Jose Samar
had to be the most mysterious, enigmatic, unfathomable man he had ever
encountered. Here he was, President of the
Philippines
, the leader of the
Commonwealth
of
Mindanao
, a powerful state in its own right, a
wealthy plantation owner and industrialist. And what was he doing? Hiding out
in the middle of nowhere, wearing filthy fatigues, within minutes or mere yards
of getting his head blown off, and leading a group of rebel soldiers around
deadly Chinese air and naval patrols.

           
Samar
was a bom leader, and he looked the part.
Tall for a Filipino, light-skinned, broad-shouldered and powerful like a
farmer, which he was on his family’s
Jolo
Island
estate before he entered politics. He was
an
Army
Academy
graduate and a former armored cavalry
officer, advancing in grade to captain before joining Ferdinand Marcos’ secret
intelligence organization. He rose to the rank of general in very short order,
commanding the ex-Philippine President’s
Mindanao
intelligence organization. He had
reportedly executed and imprisoned thousands of Moslem rebels in the prison at
Puerto Princesa in his five years as chief of intelligence . . .

           
. . . until he got religion.
Somehow, sometime, the teachings of Islam had penetrated that handsome head.
Perhaps it was the tortured cries of his victims or their families; perhaps it
was his Sulu heritage, which had been influenced for centuries by sailors and
traders from the
Middle
East
; perhaps it
was Allah or the Prophet speaking to him in his dreams—whatever it was, General
Samar became an avowed Moslem warrior. Bowman had heard his Islamic name, but
had forgotten it—his men called him “General” or occasionally “Jabal,” which
meant “mountain.”

           
Samar
had tried several rebellions against the
Marcos regime—all had been put down violently and efficiently, and a huge price
had been placed on his head. He learned to live off the land, fleeing from one
isolated jungle village to another, always one or two steps ahead of his
ex-colleagues in the secret police. His exploits as a hunted criminal and
guerrilla soldier against Marcos had earned him a widespread heroic reputation
on Mindanao, and many villagers regarded him as a modern-day Robin Hood, if not
a god. He was very successful in rallying the Moslem faithful to his side and demonstrating
to all Filipinos the cruelty and opprobrium imposed on the Filipino people by
the Marcos regime.

           
Samar
was more than ready to continue the battle
with Aquino and Mikaso of the new ruling UNIDO party, and he did stage several
raids against army barracks in Cagayan de Oro and
Davao
, but times were changing. The
Philippines
were immersed in abject poverty, the
Communists were veering out of control, and foreign investment was slipping
away. To keep the republic from destroying itself from within, Corazon Aquino
had held out her hand in peace to the two main warring factions, and
Samar
eagerly accepted it. In return for peace,
and to prevent Mindanao from splitting off from the rest of the Philippines,
Samar, once considered no greater than a dirty rodent in the wild jungles of
Mindanao, became the Second Vice President of the Philippines, constitutionally
third in line of succession for the presidency. Five provinces in central and
eastern Mindanao—Cotabato, Davao, Bukidnon, Agusan, and Suri- gao—became one
free state, with its own legislature and militia, and Samar became its first
governor.

           
Now this man was suddenly on the run
again. He was as surprised as everyone by the Chinese invasion, and by the time
he rallied his forces it was too late to save Zamboanga and Cotabato. But
Davao
had to be saved.

           
The water in the paper pan began to
boil—the paper
would
bum if he let it
boil too long. Bowman took a sip. It was terribly salty, with a pungent, slimy
aftertaste that stuck to the back of his mouth and tongue like grease, but the
warm liquid in his belly made the naval aviator feel a million times better.
“Try some, General?” he asked
Samar
.