Philippine Hardpunch (11 page)

“Cal… Cal, oh, my God, Cal,” Mrs. Jeffers shrieked, “She’s gone! Ann’s
gone!
”

T
his sector of Clark Air Force Base was one of the tightest security perimeters in the Philippines. The only trouble was that
security was on the lookout for all manner of things suspicious.

They had not been prepared for an innocent nineteen-year-old kid bopping along, whom they of course knew was the Jeffers kid,
just brought in… but she had said she was going, and through some mix-up she slipped away.

“You know how she was behaving on the helicopter, and after we landed,” said Mrs. Jeffers, later. “Well, when she realized
I wanted someone, a psychiatrist or someone, to look at her, the way you suggested, Mr. Cody, well, she started acting just
as natural as you please, warming up and everything, like everything was all right. Then I turned around… and she was gone.”

Jeffers looked around from face to face of the men at that table.

“I’m… sorry, gentlemen. My child… Ann is an impulsive young woman.”

“What happened during those three weeks of your captivity, Mr. Jeffers?” Cody asked.

“Imagine the worst thing, short of death, and that happened,” said Jeffers. “Locsin turned Ann against her mother and me.
She told Locsin about my CIA identity.”

Ann Jeffers had not shown up.

A confused, abused, rebellious young woman had somehow disappeared off the base, off the face of the Philippines, the instant
she set foot off that military installation.

Mrs. Jeffers needed a strong sedative from the paramedics to calm her once it was established beyond a doubt that her daughter’s
present whereabouts were unknown, and Cal Jeffers had not been in much better shape when he accompanied his wife, leaving
Cody’s Army alone again in the briefing room with General Simmons.

Cody respected Mr. and Mrs. Jeffers for having fought the good fight, but he was a damn sight pissed off at Ann Jeffers for
flaking out the way she had on two occasions, and he was pissed at himself for not having read the signals more clearly in
the chopper. He should have insisted, and supervised, the turning over of the kid to proper medical hands.

“Well, Cody,” said General Simmons, “where do you think your men should take it from here? We were supposed to ensure that
kid’s safety, and we haven’t. She’s gone.”

Hawkeye Hawkins snarled, “Who gives a rat’s ass? Lamebrain brat gets what she deserves, screwing up like that, falling for
that Locsin’s bullshit, and now this.”

Caine eyed the Texan sternly.

“That’s a bit harsh, don’t you think? Locsin took advantage of, and essentially raped, a confused young person. Ann is a victim.”

Murphy growled, “Whatever she is, she’s gone, but without a damn thing to go on, what can we do?”

Cody said, “We keep on Javier. We keep our ear to the ground. The first time we pick up anything regarding the Jeffers kid,
we move on that. It’s all tied in.”

“We’re covered on one angle, at least,” Simmons said. “I got word from our Filipino government connection.

“Their man with that group you tangled with this morning sent them some interesting news. ‘Colonel Locsin is dead,’ was all
the contact could pass on.”

“The Filipino government’s playing it too damn close to the vest,” the general grumbled. “They don’t know who to trust. They
don’t even think we know as much as we do.”

Cody said, “Locsin was hooked in with Javier and Valera, but he was working the Jeffers thing on his own. When that blew up
in his face and brought down the heat, Javier decided Locsin was a liability and canceled him out of the picture.”

“A liability regarding
what
?” Caine asked the group rhetorically.

“We have to put the heat on,” said Cody. “General Simmons, what were you able to get on Lopez?”

The general set a briefcase on the table before him, unsnapped it open, and withdrew a thick file folder, which he slid across
the table in Cody’s direction.

“I’ll save you some reading time. The Party thinks Valera is too radical, too noisy for these delicate times. He’s been practically
shunted out of the picture. Whatever he was doing at Locsin’s camp, it was not in any official capacity.”

“What’s he do besides own a nightclub?”

“He’s said to be a power in the black market,” Simmons said, “but he’s been too slick there to get tabbed for anything, either.”

“That’s the tie-in with Javier,” said Cody. “Javier has his own force lined up behind him, his goons, and he’s got the hinterlands
in his pocket if the NPA is sleeping with him. Valera holds the reins of the Manila underworld, and if
he’s
in this with Javier, too, yeah, we are talking a real big picture.”

“Sounds like this Valera bird is the handle we’re looking for,” Caine said. “The most readily available, at any rate.”

Cody looked at General Simmons.

“Where’s this club he owns?”

“A joint called the Gilded Peacock, on Pilar Street,” said Simmons. “Valera owns controlling interest in it. A woman named
Mara Zobel runs it for him and she’s almost as bad news as Valera. They’re two of a kind.

“There’s gambling, and a floor with private rooms. Open at full tilt, around the clock. Has a reputation as a rough place.”

Hawkeye grinned. “Sounds like this boy’s kind of place.”

Simmons cleared his throat, then snapped shut his briefcase and stood.

“As instructed, gentlemen, I will have at your disposal whatever vehicles and armament you may need for the remainder of your
mission. You’re going after Valera, then, I take it?”

“We are.” Cody nodded. “And I don’t think camou fatigues are going to cut it at the Gilded Peacock.”

“We’ll get you appropriate civilian attire, Simmons assured him. “I’ll see to it immediately. But I, uh, just let me make
sure I’ve got one thing straight in my mind.”

“What’s that, General?”

“My orders, and your orders, state that you are here, and I am to provide full backup, specifically in the matter of rescuing
the Jeffers family.”

“You read the orders right.”

“Then, uh, what the hell are you doing chasing after Vincente Valera and Arturo Javier and half the goddamn New People’s Army?
I still don’t see how that is going to affect the return of Ann Jeffers, whose safety
is
our concern.”

“Sounds like the general here don’t like being told what to do, Sarge,” Murphy tsk-tsked from where he sat. “And I thought
brass was supposed to shine.”

Caine put in hastily, “Uh, perhaps it should be pointed out to the general that these diverse factions you mention may be
our only lead to the girl.”

“Ann Jeffers broke under the pressure.” Cody cut through the shortening tempers around the table. “After what happened, maybe
she just needs some time to herself to get her head back together.

“Or maybe she’ll try to do something to redeem herself for the betrayal of her parents, for telling about her dad’s time with
the CIA. Ann doesn’t know that the word on that probably went to the grave with Locsin. Whoever else was in on it will keep
their traps shut or they’ll get the same thing Javier gave the colonel.

“A kid in that space might do anything. If she does try something, it’ll take her to some of these people we’re after sooner
or later. Keep the lid on the Jeffers angle, but pass what you can along to the Filipino government about what we may be on
to.”

Simmons stood at the door, briefcase in hand, his other hand on the doorknob, sizing Cody up from across the room, or trying
to. “The word I got was that your were after terrorists.”

We are, General, and sometimes we go after terrorists who wrap themselves in millions of bucks worth of protection, and power,
like Arturo Javier. Sometimes we go after terrorists who hide behind political shit, like this Vincente Valera.

“There’s more to it than that.” Simmons said. “More than that, more than the girl. You won’t find that kid, you know. Out
there it’s a jungle, like the saying goes, only this one is real, fella, and I’m talking about the islands, and I’m talking
about downtown fucking Manila.”

“Hey, General,” grunted Hawkeye from where the Texan sat sideways in his chair with both long legs cocked over one of the
chair arms. “Try this one on for size. It’s just like Nam, you got that, all over again. This one’s the last domino. Maybe
we’ve been handed a chance to keep it from falling, all by our lonesome, before too many more people get killed.”

Simmons started to reply, then professional soldier eyes pinned each man around that table, and he said to Cody, without a
hint of sarcasm, “Maybe you can at that.”

The general left them alone.

Caine chuckled at Hawkins.

“A real diplomatic sort of chap, that’s what you are, Tex, so bleeding polite all the time.”

“The general’s on our side,” Murphy reasoned. “Can’t blame him for being a mite confused. I’m a little confused myself.”

“What about it, Sarge?” Hawkeye asked. “This ‘something big’ we’re talking about. Okay, I’ll buy that. We all buy it. That
nasty shit I said a while back about the Jeffers kid, hell, I was just pissing off steam. We’ve got to find that kid before
she gets in worse trouble.”

“I know that,” Cody assured him. “Ann Jeffers is still Priority Number One, but the general’s right, there’s more to it than
the reasons we gave him for going after Valera.”

“We
can’t
walk away from this one. It is the same thing Nam was about. The ones who think they need to tear society down instead of
weeding out the bad apples and letting the machinery work. They never get their way, not for long, but that doesn’t stop them
from trying. Sometimes they win, sometimes we win. They won in Nam. This one’s up for grabs. We can’t walk away from it.”

“And we won’t,” Hawkeye assured him. “So we’re going nightcrawlin’ tonight, eh?”

“The Gilded Peacock.” Caine shivered. “Dreadful name. Dreadful enough to be a great place, one can only hope.”

“Nightclubbin’ in the middle of the day.” Murphy’s gleam of a smile creased his lower face from ear to ear. “Well, all
right
.

Cody saw beneath the surface of this easy flow of conversation between fighting men who knew this fight was not over, not
yet begun, in the true, bigger sense—if the picture added up the way Cody figured, and Cody knew it did.

A murderous, all-powerful warlord.

The mountain guerillas of the New People’s Army.

And a rotten apple named Vincente Valera who needed serious weeding out.

And, bottom line, yeah, a mixed-up, abused, confused, on-the-loose kid named Ann Jeffers who had already been through enough
hell for three times her short lifetime.

“Let’s get to it,” Cody growled.

He led his team out of there, back into the world, to take on the devil.

The most difficult thing Ann had ever done in her life was to pretend to be normal back there at the base when her mother
and father had suggested she see a psychiatrist.

She understood what was happening to her but could not stop the self-loathing from swirling through her like a spreading dark
stain, eating her up inside like a painful cancer, making her wish she had died back there in that jungle.

It was all like some intense nightmare that had not yet ended.

She had been such a fool.

She wondered how her mom and dad could ever forgive her. She wondered how she could ever forgive herself, or live with herself
after what she had done to those two decent, good people responsible for her very existence.

After she left the classified area where they had been brought after the chopper landed, she had soon enough found a stop
where several people stood waiting to catch one of the base buses, some army wives with their army brats on their way to catch
a bus into Manila outside the main gate.

She slipped onto the bus and rode to the gate without bringing any suspicion upon herself, as far as she could tell. She got
off with most of the others when they reached the gate.

No one questioned any of the bus riders on their way out.

In front of the installation, she started toward one of the buses parked across the street, then pulled up short when she
realized that she did not have a peso to her name.

She wore the jeans, blouse, and shoes provided from the PX, and she had cleaned up, scrubbed her face quickly in the ladies’
room, before her mother had popped that psychiatrist stuff, so she looked presentable enough, but that was all.

She did not know what to do.

She started walking.

*      *      *

Ramos nudged Jorges in the side.

“There! Look!”

“What?” Jorges grumbled irritably, looking at the Air Force dependents passing through the main gate. “What are you talking
about?”

Ramos grew more animated by the second.

“There! The dark-haired one!” He lifted the photograph he held, a copy of one of the pictures that had been sent. It’s the
Jeffers child.”

“What? Let me see that!” He looked at the snapshot, then at the young woman across the street, the shapely teenager walking
by herself away from the base, down the sidewalk. He handed the picture back. “You’re right, it is her. Ha. We are told to
sit and watch and learn what we can. Mara said nothing about anything like this. What should we do?”

Ramos slapped the wheelman irrititably with the snapshot.

“Why, what do you think, imbecile. We grab her.”

“Here? In front of all these people? Ramos, I’m not sure—”

“Do as I tell you,” Ramos hissed in a different voice. “Get us going around from here. Coast up quietly, behind her. No one
is looking after her. I can have her in the car and we-’ll be gone.”

“But we should call—”

Ramos slid the pistol in his pocket halfway out.

“There is no time. Do you want me to take the wheel, Jorges, and report that you refused to obey my order?”

“No, no, of course not—”

“Then do what I tell you.”

“Very well.”

Jorges steered their eight-year-old Renault around in a U-turn, tapped the gas pedal, then cut the engine to begin coasting
along the curb, continuing well away from the main gate and activities of people there.