Gray Resurrection (5 page)

The man he was due to meet was called
Abu Assaf, the current head of the Abu Sayyaf organisation.  Mansour had
very little information about the man, except that he was in his forties and
had stepped into the vacant position after the previous leader was shot by a
raiding party led by a U.S. SAD team four months earlier.  He was glad
that he was going into the initial meeting with no preconceptions: he preferred
to form his own opinions based on what he experienced, not what he had heard
from others.

“It has been a long journey,” Nabil
said, gazing out towards the horizon.

“Our journey is just beginning,” Mansour
replied.  “Once we arrive it is imperative that we get them to strike as
soon as possible.  I will remain here while we plan the attack, but after
that I will be moving on.  I would like you to stay here and show them how
to organise themselves against the infidels.”

Shah nodded, showing no emotion, though
deep down he was proud to be offered the opportunity to prove himself again.

It was over an hour before they neared the
shore: unsurprisingly, it wasn’t a commercial port they drew up to but simply a
deserted beach.  A group of men was waiting and as soon as the anchor went
out they waded into the water and began unloading the boxes he had
brought.  One man was supervising the transfer and Mansour made a beeline
for him.

 “
Salam
alaikum
!” the
man said, and Mansour returned the greeting.

“I am Jun,” he said.  “We go soon.”

It was obvious to Mansour that he wasn’t
much of a conversationalist, and equally apparent that there were not enough
men to carry all of the baggage he had brought.  Jun saw this too, and
ordered half of the consignment to be camouflaged and appointed two armed
guards to watch over it.  The rest of the boxes were picked up and Jun led
the way into the jungle, with Mansour and Shah following in his footsteps.

The march to the camp was slow going,
mainly due to the weight of the boxes but also because they were avoiding known
tracks, instead relying on Jun to cut a way through the dense vegetation with
his bolo.  This turned out to be the most intense part of his journey,
knowing that somewhere on this small island there were close to two hundred
U.S. and Filipino troops who would just love to get their hands on him, and
here they were crawling along at a snail’s pace.

They stopped twice on their way to the
camp, the second time for over an hour as a patrol ventured close.  They
crouched in silence as the soldiers made camp just thirty yards away and
started cooking up their lunch.  Mansour could see a few of the Abu Sayyaf
were itching to take them on but Jun threw them looks which warned them to just
stay quiet.  Eventually the patrol moved on and they were able to make the
last mile and a half without further encounters.

It was hardly recognisable as a camp. 
The only distinguishing feature was the number of people gathered in the small
clearing, with no permanent structures to suggest they would remain here for
any length of time.

Abu Assaf came to greet them effusively,
arms spread wide and a toothless smile on his face, then ushered them over to a
log next to a small fire.  Three large fish were cooking over the flames
and a pot of rice bubbled away on a small gas stove.  Mansour suddenly
realised that he hadn’t eaten in over twenty hours and graciously accepted the
invitation to dine.

“I understand you have gifts for us,”
Assaf said in excellent English, the accent British.

Mansour nodded and led him over to the
boxes arranged at the centre of the clearing.  The first one he opened was
the size of a family suitcase and contained nothing but cash, over two million
American dollars in twenties and fifties, and Mansour was glad to note that
Assaf’s reaction was muted appreciation.  There were no signs of greed on
the man’s face, just a look that said “this could come in handy.”

The next box to be opened revealed
dozens of brand new M16 rifles still wrapped in protective wax paper. 
“Rather than AK-47s, we decided to provide weapons your enemies use because
this way you can make use of any captured ammunition,” Mansour said.

He gestured to a couple of boxes and
explained that they were full of 5.56mm rounds for the rifles, then opened the
next container.

“Claymore mines,” he said, lifting one
out to show it to Assaf.  “These will help with setting up defensive perimeters
and discouraging your enemies from following you,” he explained when he saw the
look of confusion.

He smiled as he pointed to the next
three boxes.  “These will be the difference between a struggle with the
AFP and driving them out of the land,” he said.  Releasing the catches on
one of the lids, he swung it open to reveal a Dillon Aero M134 Mini-gun. 
The six-barrelled weapon fired 7.62mm bullets at an astonishing fifty
rounds-per-second, fed from a 4400-round magazine.

“In the other boxes I have grenades, C4
explosive, ammunition for the M134 and twenty single-shot RPG-27s.  Bear
in mind, this is just a down payment on the support we are willing to offer
you.”

“What are you asking in return?” Assaf
asked, clearly satisfied with the gifts.

Mansour placed an arm around his
shoulder and led him away to a quiet spot at the edge of the clearing. 
“We want only what you want: to drive the infidels from the land.  To do
that you must become a force to be reckoned with, and I will show you how. 
The days of cowering in the jungle will soon be over for Abu Sayyaf.”

“We do not cower,” Assaf said harshly,
aggrieved at the suggestion.

“Perhaps not, but while the AFP and the
Americans wander calmly through your towns, you are sleeping up here in the
hills.  That is the first thing we need to change.”

“How do we do that?  There are
barely a hundred of us.”

“Don’t you have any men on the
surrounding islands that you can call on?” Mansour asked.

“There are perhaps another hundred
spread throughout the Sulu Sea, but they have hostages and are trying to
negotiate their release.”

“Bring them all here,” Mansour
said.  “You have no more need to risk the lives of your men for mere
money: we can provide all you need.”

Assaf nodded, making a mental note to
pass on the order while Mansour continued with the questions.

“When was the last time you launched an
attack on the infidels?”

“Attack?  We can barely defend
ourselves, never mind launch an attack.  Besides, there are American
soldiers here — elite American soldiers.”

“Who have a strictly non-combatant role,
as I understand,” Mansour smiled.  “Tell me everything you know about
their base.”

“I know much about their base,” Assaf
said, “but attacking it would only cause them to double their efforts against
us.  It would be counterproductive.”

“Far from it, my friend.  An attack
on their base may indeed make them bring the fight to you, but it would also
show Jemaah Islamiyah that Abu Sayyaf are no longer the poor relation they
think you are.  Your Indonesian brothers will sit up and take notice of
you once again, and by reuniting with them the Muslim movement within the
region will become stronger than you could ever imagine.”

“They will not join with us.  They
refuse to even talk to us, so how will this one attack change their mind?”

“It is quite simple,” Mansour
said.  “I will act as your emissary to explain that they can join us and
share the glory — as well as the support we will provide — or they can fend for
themselves and we will no longer provide them with training, weapons or funds.”

“They are proud people,” Assaf
argued.  “They will not submit to threats and intimidation.”

“As are we all, brother, but any man who
puts his own pride before the will of Allah is not worthy of calling himself a
true believer.  I will give them one chance, and one chance only. 
Naturally, I shall be very diplomatic in my approach.”

Mansour could see that Assaf was still
not convinced, but he was confident in his own ability to bring the two groups
together.

“Let me worry about Jemaah Islamiyah,
brother.  All you need to do is help me plan the attack on their camp.”

Chapter 5

Monday 16th
April 2012

Sam Grant found the going hard enough without
having to keep step with Halton, whose bare feet were constantly slipping on
the wet jungle floor.  A rain shower had hit an hour earlier and the
remnants were still falling from the dense canopy above, even though the clouds
had long since gone.  While it cooled him down and provided some much
needed drinking water, it also turned the floor to gloop which his trainers
were struggling to cope with, despite the decent tread on the sole.  The
camber of the route they were taking didn't help, either, and the undulating
terrain meant they were either climbing or descending, rarely walking on level
ground.  

Things got much worse when they came to
a river and Bong signalled for everyone to break for food.  Most made
their way to the bank and took in as much water as they could, while Vick and
Moore waded into the water to give themselves a quick wash.  They did so
without removing any garments, and Grant guessed this was due to shyness on
their part.  Once they'd finished they sat down next to Grant and Halton.

“It's really hard washing yourself with
all your clothes on,” she said.  “I nearly got a beating the first time I
stripped down to my bra and panties.  I haven't taken these off since,”
she said, fingering the ragged material of the khaki blouse.  “Apparently
it makes the Muslim men uncomfortable or something.”

“What's your story, Sam Grant?” asked
Moore.

Before he could answer, Ox came and
stood in front of him and rattled off some Tagalog that Grant barely
understood, although he did catch the word “
Sapatos
”
— shoes.  Feigning ignorance, Grant simply shrugged but it wasn't enough
to deter Ox, who grabbed one of his feet and hoisted it into the air.

“Akin 'to,” Ox said. 
These are
mine.

Rather than get into a confrontation
Grant slipped off his sneakers and handed them over.  Ox snatched them and
walked off to try them on, leaving Grant with not so much as a ‘Salamat’.

“You’ll get used to that,” Halton
said.  “What’s yours is theirs, period.  You’ll be lucky to hold on
to that T-shirt for much longer.”

Sure enough, Ox was back moments
later.  He whipped off his grimy sando and threw it at Grant, holding out
his hand for the Lacoste T-shirt in exchange.  Again, Grant handed it over
without complaint and Ox trotted away to show off his new attire.  Grant
considered ditching the stinking rag but knew he would be grateful for it when
the mosquitoes got into full attack mode.  He did, however, start to
imagine the things he would do to Ox should the chance present itself.

“So?” Vick asked.

“So what?” Grant replied, confused.

“What’s your story?”

“Oh yeah, sorry.  My mind was
elsewhere.”  He told them about the death of Alma’s brother and his
abduction from the hotel, and when asked for his reason for being in Manila he
gave them the same story he’d told his girlfriend when they had met. 
Throughout the monologue he was acutely aware of Vick staring at him, a look of
fierce concentration on her face.  When he finished he stared back at her
and she blushed when she realised what she had been doing.

“I’m sorry, but you just look so
familiar,” she explained.

“There’s an exhibit in the British
Museum called Neanderthal Man.  Maybe you saw me there.”

She shrugged off his weak joke and the
look of concentration returned, and Grant was thankful when their dinner was served:
a pile of rice on a large leaf. Everyone tucked in, grabbing handfuls of the
bland food and shoving it in their mouths as fast as they could manage. 
It was a free-for-all, with plenty of shoving and pushing, and the leaf was
picked clean within a couple of minutes.  Grant had managed to get one
decent handful and could have easily outmuscled the others to get more, but
their condition was much worse than his and he figured they needed the
nutrition more.  If he was going to be here any length of time he would
have taken all he could, but he was determined not to be in it for the long
haul:  Either Farrar would come up with the money, or he’d fight his way
out.

Halton suddenly reached down to his
ankle and began undoing the twine.

“What are you doing?” Grant asked,
worried that his companion was about to do something stupid.

Halton shouted “Ebbs ako,” and the
nearest guard looked at him and nodded his head.

“I’m going to park my breakfast,” he
told Grant, and wandered away from the group grabbing a couple of large leaves
on the way.

“They just let you wander off on your
own?” Grant asked, clearly surprised.  “Aren’t they worried that you’ll
run off?”

“You have to stay in view,” Vick
explained.  “If you disappear into the jungle they’ll come after you with
their bolos.  You don’t want that to happen, trust me.”

Grant assured her he would do no such
thing.  “You’ve heard my story.  What about you?” he asked.

“I’m a travel writer,” she said. 
“I was doing a story about Apulit Island in Palawan and was enjoying an evening
on Rob’s boat.  He has a charter company on the island and a few of us
were on the sunset cruise when they struck.”

“How many others were there?” Grant
asked.

“There were seven of us in all: Rob and
I plus five Filipinos.  They transferred us onto their boat and brought us
here.”

“Are the others here?”

He could see the pain in her eyes when
he asked the question, and suddenly wished he hadn’t.

“There were two couples and one of them
had a daughter, Carmen.  She was only three...” Her voice tailed off as
the tears came, and Grant guessed this wasn’t the first time she had cried
since being here.

“They threw Carmen overboard on the
second day,” Moore explained, putting an arm around Vick’s shoulder and
cradling her head against his chest.  “She had been crying, probably
because she was so hungry, and when her mother couldn’t settle her down one of
them just grabbed her and tossed her over the side like she was a bag of
rubbish.”

“Christ!” Grant said, astonished that
anyone could be so deliberately brutal towards a child.

“The mother dived straight in after
her,” Moore continued.  “Before they could stop him, the father jumped,
too.  We were about halfway through our journey at the time, which meant
they were about a hundred and fifty miles from land.”

He didn’t need to elaborate for Grant to
understand what he was trying to say: there was no way they could have
survived.

“The other two made it here with us, but
after ten days the husband was taken for a walk and never came back.  When
the wife couldn’t arrange her ransom she was taken for a walk, too.”

“What about Eddie?” Grant asked, nodding
in the direction of the squatting figure ten yards away.

“He’s just a tourist, and a
pain-in-the-arse one at that,” Moore said.  “We all know the future doesn’t
look rosy but he bitches about it all day long.  You’ll learn to tune him
out after a few weeks.”

“I hope it isn’t going to take that
long,” Grant said.  “Do they honour the ransoms that are paid?”

“Yes, so far.  There was a German
guy here last month and he managed to arrange his ransom within a few
days.  He even sent a food package for us a week later, but all we got
from it was a note.  Bong had the rest.”

“Bong’s English is good,” Grant noted.

“He was educated at De La Salle, the
best university in Manila.” Vick said, having regained her composure. 
“Comes from a well-off family who kicked him out of the house when they heard
he was hanging out with Muslim friends, and he came down here to teach them a
lesson.  His friends introduced him to Jonjon and he signed up there and
then.”

“Did he tell you this?”

“God no, it was Dindo,” she said,
lowering her voice and gesturing towards one of the younger captors.  “He
drops by every night and slips me some food when the others are asleep.  I
think he has a crush on me.”

Grant wasn’t surprised, given her
looks.  “Bong doesn’t seem very friendly.  Are they all like that?”

“To be honest, most of them treat us as
well as can be expected.  Bong is the exception, though.  I think there’s
a little power struggle going on there.”

“How so?”

“He’s told us on more than one occasion
that we are being treated too well, and that when he takes command things will
become a lot tougher for us.  I think the conflict stems from their
goals:  While Bong is fighting for an independent Muslim state, Dindo
thinks Jonjon and Abel are in it for the money, pure and simple.”

Grant glanced upstream where the senior
Abu Sayyaf members were gathered and the power struggle became a little more
even as a plume of red erupted from Jonjon’s chest, spraying blood all over
Guzman’s head and neck.  The report from the bullet followed a millisecond
later.

“Sundalos!”

As the shout went up, their captors
grabbed their weapons and began returning fire, spraying bullets into the
undergrowth in the general direction of the initial round on the far bank of
the river.  As bullets began peppering the area, Vick and the rest of the
hostages tried to make themselves as small as possible but Grant knew it was
just a matter of time before one of them was hit. He sought a defilade position
and saw one a few yards away, a slight depression behind the rotting trunk of a
fallen tree.  He grabbed Vick and began pulling her towards it, then
remembered that she was still attached to Moore.

“Move!” he shouted at them, but Moore
had frozen, his body shutting down in response to the assault.  Grant
leaned over Vick and grabbed him by the ear, twisting it as hard as
possible.  Moore had no option but to follow, and Grant pulled them to the
safety of cover.

The fire intensified on both sides, and
Grant realised that Bong’s warning about the AFP was true: they were more
likely to kill the hostages than rescue them.  Fire from both sides was
indiscriminate, and Grant wondered how many of the AFP had their eyes opened
during the attack.  Bullets strafed the log and a cry went out as one of
the Filipino hostages took a round to the calf, a round that would have done
serious damage to Vick or Moore if he hadn’t dragged them to safety.

Grant gauged the incoming fire and
estimated that there were five or six attackers as best, suggesting a small
recon patrol: an extremely stupid recon patrol, given the circumstances. 
In their position he would have laid up and called in reinforcements rather than
try to take on a much larger force, especially one holding hostages.

One of the guards went down with a wound
to the throat but he was ignored by his compatriots as they continued to repel
the attackers.  A couple of grenades were lobbed across the narrow river,
one landing harmlessly short but the other bouncing its way into the
vegetation, taking out two AFP soldiers.

Grant nearly jumped with fright when a
body landed next to him and he turned to see Halton cowering by his side,
trousers still around his ankles.

"
Unbe
-fucking-
lievable
! Whose side are they on, for Christ’s sake?"

Grant ignored him, instead concentrating
on one of the Abu Sayyaf who had picked up the loaded RPG.  His stance was
all wrong, and as he fired he lost his balance, falling flat on his
backside.  Luckily for all concerned — except the AFP — the explosive head
went where he had aimed. 

Crump.

A tree took the brunt of the impact,
cracking the trunk in two, but the AFP got the message and their attack petered
out as they retreated back through the jungle, firing sporadically as they ran.

With the battle having lasted barely
more than a couple of minutes a sense of calm returned to the jungle, but the
Abu Sayyaf members were still pumped up, keeping a close watch on the far
bank.  The silence didn’t last long, however, as the Filipino woman who’d
been hit in the leg began to make the transition from shock to pain.  Her
cries were ignored by the guards, who were more intent on dealing with their
own fallen, two of whom were clearly dead.  The other casualty was one of
the younger Abu Sayyaf who had sustained a flesh wound to the arm, and he
showed it off proudly, pleased with his new battle scar.

Bong began barking orders and the two
bodies were wrapped in hammocks, ready to be carried away.  Others were
instructed to see to the hostages and they began by ensuring everyone was
tethered to at least one other person.  When they got to the injured woman
they seemed at a loss as to what to do.  Her screams were intensifying all
the time and any attempts to treat the wound simply increased her hysteria.

After a couple of minutes Bong
purposefully strode over to them and surveyed the situation.  It was clear
to everyone that the woman was not going to be able to walk on the injured leg,
and the noise she was making would only serve to alert the AFP as to their
whereabouts.  He rattled off more orders in Tagalog and the tether was
removed from the woman’s other ankle.