Philippine Hardpunch (17 page)

One of the sentries strode over to the car.

Maceda nodded approvingly to himself. The sentries surely recognized the car and the license plates by now, but the side windows
of the BMW were smoked glass, and so this sentry was coming forward just to make sure while his partner covered the car from
inside the gate with a rifle. Maceda fingered the mechanism for lowering the window.

The sentry stared in briefly, as one of the gate guards always had on the few occasions he had visited Valera; then the guard
straightened in a hurry and nodded to the man inside the gate.

The iron gate yawned open.

The BMW purred on through.

Maceda closed the window and relaxed back against the plush interior as the driver gained speed along the slight incline toward
the house, where Maceda saw—through the slight drizzle which started as the BMW pulled onto the ground—Valera standing and
waiting for him beneath the porte cochere.

The senator appeared aloof, almost absentminded, but Maceda knew a shrewd man functioned behind those deceiving features;
almost as shrewd as the man, Arturo Javier, who had managed to put this entire incredible thing together.

Operation Thunderstrike, yes.

A carefully orchestrated, national overthrow of the present government, accomplished through selective strikes at key government
targets: assassinations, attacks on police and military strongpoints, assaults on the administrative centers of the new government.

Javier had been the one selected by the exiled Marcos hierarchy to organize the thing, but Maceda felt no jealousy over that.

Maceda was a career army man who prided himself in thinking that he never missed an opportunity for monetary gain—and the
privileges of rank and power of his years under the Marcos government had offered enough such opportunities to make him a
very wealthy man.

Still, one could always use more money, more power.

Which was why he had gone along with this alignment of such diverse forces as Valera and the NPA and Javier.

There was no way Operation Thunderstrike could not be a resounding success, or so he told himself. Only a few short hours
to go, and the country, and the glory would again be theirs.

The BMW coasted to a stop beneath the porte cochere. Valera watched as the chauffeur climbed out from behind the wheel and
hurried back to open the rear door for the General.

Maceda stepped out, a lithe, fiftyish man of stern military bearing who gave the impression of being hard as nails, his eyes,
as always, concealed behind the reflecting sunglasses he wore even on this rainy day.

Those sunglasses always had an unsettling effect on Valera, which he tried now to ignore.

“Welcome once again to my home, General. It is good to see you. I trust you had a pleasant drive out from Man—”

“We will dispense with the amenities, Senator,” Maceda snapped. “The moment of truth is at hand.”

Valera did not need to be reminded of that. He would have been unable to sleep the last several nights had it not been for
the massive doses of sedatives prescribed by his physician, and even through the day-after grogginess he could feel the quivering
in his stomach lining that would not stop.

He realized anew that his talent lay in deception, the subtleties of politics and secrecy. He was not a fighter. He had been
far more confident than this during the planning stages of Operation Thunderstrike.

He had been suspicious at first, of course, very suspicious, upon being asked to cooperate not only with old enemies like
Arturo Javier, but with men like Maceda, whom Valera considered a walking threat.

But orders were orders and those orders had come directly from no other than General Chung of the North Korean UNG II, those
orders as such constituting no less than tacit KGB approval for Valera to cooperate with Javier’s proposals regarding Valera’s
underworld connections—as well as having Valera function as initial liaison in bringing Javier together with the New People’s
Army.

Maceda turned from the car and led the way into the house as if he owned the place.

Valera found himself hurrying to keep up.

“I, uh, trust this rain will not… interfere with Operation Thunderstrike, General.”

“It will work to our advantage,” Maceda snarled. He headed down the first-floor hallway toward the library, which he had taken
over as his private office—another thing Valera hated him for.

Maceda’s men, in uniform, were walking and talking everywhere in the house. An air of preparation and anticipation prevailed.
He had made his daily routine check-in call ten minutes ago, to speak briefly with Mara about how the club was doing and so
forth. Except today. A gruff voice he had not recognized had answered the phone and would give out no information, nor would
it patch him through to Mara.

He had decided he was talking to a policeman and had hung up before they could trace the call.

He decided it might be best if he said nothing about this to Maceda for the time being.

They were halfway to the library doorway when one of Valera’s servants appeared. “A call for you, Mr. Valera. It’s Edmundo,
from the club.”

Maceda eyed Valera coldly and started toward the phone before Valera could.

“I’ll take that.”

Valera’s heart sank.

Something was
very
wrong, he sensed.

As Maceda had said, the moment of truth was at hand.

C
al Jeffers left the room where his wife slept soundly on a hospital cot. His eyes were open and his feet shuffled him along,
but he was barely aware of where he was and where he was going, though long years of training in the American espionage service
had taught him how to keep under control at times like this.

He bumped into someone walking down the hallway and mumbled an “excuse me,” reprimanding himself for letting the strain show.
He pulled himself erect, left the wing of the building, and crossed the rainy courtyard to the building next door on this
classified corner of Clark Air Force Base.

The misting precip cooled and revived him and he was feeling better when he gained the second building and started down the
corridor in the direction of General Simmons’ office.

Simmons had allowed him to stay on-deck through to the finish of this, one way or the other. The object of concern was his
daughter, after all.

He had felt compelled to check in on Louise and had excused himself, and now felt glad that he had looked in on her. He felt
relief knowing that she was asleep, unconscious, not hurting with the excruciating agony of not knowing what he felt.

He reached a point several paces from Simmons’ office, the doorway of which was partially opened, and slowed his step when
he overheard voices from inside the office, there being a minimum of foot traffic along this corridor as so few people knew
anything about the mission in the first place.

“Word just came in, sir,” a voice, not Simmons’, was reporting. “I picked it up monitoring the police band out of Manila,
as you requested. Big doings at the Gilded Peacock.

“Let’s have it, Captain.”

“A brawl, a couple of deaths. Gunshot wounds.”

“The cops have anything on Cody and his boys?”

“Not yet they don’t. Last seen, Cody and his team were hauling ass away from there.”

“I’ll bet they were.”

“Supposedly chasing a Renault that belonged to one of the dead men.”

“Any sign of someone named Mara Zobel?”

“No names at all so far. I just picked it up seconds ago. It’s still happening. The report I picked up said the club had been
cleared out except for one or two drunks, one or two employees and the dead men. Everyone stopped fighting and split as soon
as the shooting started.”

Jeffers could listen to no more. He stepped into the office.

“And my daughter?” he asked the captain. “Was there any word about her?”

The captain looked at Jeffers blankly, then back at Simmons.

“Sir, I’m afraid, er, that is, I don’t think I—”

Simmons cut him off with, “That will be all, Captain. Thank you. Keep us posted.”

“Yes, sir.”

The captain nodded to Jeffers on his way out, closing the door behind him.

Jeffers said, “I’m sorry, General, but I really would like to know what any of this has to do with my daughter.”

“Mr. Jeffers, you’ve a personal stake in this, that is why I agreed to let you stay on, but I can’t have you interfering with
our other business around here.”

Jeffers considered that a moment.

“I’m sorry, General. I know you’re right and I guess I did make a fool out of myself just now. It’s just that… I’m so damned
worried about Ann.”

“She’ll turn up, Cal.”

“Will she? We don’t have the slightest idea where Ann could have gone to.” Jeffers sank into a chair. “It had all worked out
so fine, Cody and his gang coming in like some movie commandos to pull us out of Locsin’s camp. Maybe it wasn’t a movie, but
it damn sure almost had a happy ending.”

He smashed a fist into an open palm. “Damn that kid of mine! Damn her, damn her,
damn
her for what she’s done… no, wait, no, goddamn it, I
don’t
mean that… shit, I don’t know what I mean.”

Simmons strode over and placed a hand on Jeffers’ shoulder.

“Slow down, Cal. There are overlapping priorities here. I had that captain keeping the town wired for something on Vincente
Valera, but the captain doesn’t know why. And I don’t know what Cody and those loonies of his are up to. I’m not even all
that goddamn sure Cody himself knows.”

“But Ann… they went looking for her, didn’t they, and now you say Cody and his men are involved in this shooting and so on.
Could Ann be involved in that? By God, I should have gone with Cody. My own flesh and blood out there in enemy hands, and
I’m sitting here on my ass.”

“Er, Cal, I believe the team is monitoring the situation,” Simmons kidded, trying to break through some of the tension. “Believe
me, Cal, I do have Manila wired. We’ll know within minutes what happened at that club—and whether or not your daughter was
involved.”

The phone on Simmons’ desk rang, causing both men to start slightly.

General Eugene Simmons was not used to feeling on edge, and his was a high-pressure business all around, but what made it
worse this time was that Cody’s Army, and by extension himself and this small unit of his, were totally out of bounds regarding
Philippine law or diplomacy. He did not expect this to stay under wraps for very much longer.

He grabbed the phone up to his ear.

“Simmons.”

He could feel Jeffers’ anxiously eyes on him.

“Simmons, this is O’Donnell. What the hell have you got going on down there this time?”

O’Donnell, a four star, was Simmons’ commanding officer but, without Need To Know, Simmons knew it was a rhetorical question.
He also knew Clem O’Donnell well enough to know his CO. was steamed, the heat in his voice eating up the wire.

“You know I can’t tell you that, sir,” Simmons said.

“Goddamn it, Gene, you’re going to be telling someone about it damn soon and it might just be a board of inquiry—-if not the
Flips, then us.”

“I’ll worry about that when the time comes.”

“Listen, you,” O’Donnell, who was a friend, bristled, “I’ve just had my butt chewed out from one end of this goddamn office
to the other. Generals do get their asses chewed from time to time.”

“I, uh, think I’m finding that out, but you know the position I’m in, Clem. I can’t tell you what we’ve been up to over here,
and why should you want to know? Who’s been chewing your ass?”

“The goddamn Flips, who d’ya think,” O’Donnell snarled. “Cops and military.”

“They want to know what?”

“They want to know what a Lancia, with plates registered to your unit, is doing involved in some sort of shoot-out at a place
called the Gilded Peacock.”

“And the military?”

“They got on line soon as the cops got off. There was some blowout down on Mindanao this morning and now the Jefferses are
said to be back home. Since they were being held by the New People’s Army, the military wants to know why
they
weren’t advised of this, why
they
weren’t brought in on it, etcetera, etcetera.”

“I take it, sir, that you told them to fold it up and shove it where the sun don’t shine.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“I mean, they had how many weeks to do something to find those people, and what did we get? Diddley-squat! So we brought in
the best we have and we got the job done and if they don’t like it, goddamn it, sir, that should be tough shit. Those Americans
were being held prisoner, a child being raped and abused, and a team of four men sent in did something about that, brought
them home. We’re a world power, f’chrissake. Maybe it’s time we start acting like it when the situation calls for it. Sir.”

A long pause came from the other end.

Then O’Donnell said, in a tired voice, “You’re right, Gene, damn your hide. I’ll take care of the Flips. But remember, I can
only stall them for so long, and I’m talking about no more than a couple of hours. They can go over my head too, you know.”

“The people who came in to handle this for us,” Simmons said, “I’ve got a feeling a couple of hours is all they’ll need.”

“Damn, this top secret shit is a pain,” O’Donnell grumbled. “You better damn well be sure the stakes are worth it.”

“They are.”

“Then give ’em hell, Gene.”

O’Donnell broke the connection.

Simmons hung up the telephone. He could tell Jeffers had followed this end of the conversation closely.

Jeffers said, “They don’t like the outlaws, do they, General? Even if these outlaws are on our side.”

Simmons nodded. “That’s because sometimes the outlaws, no matter whose side they’re on, are the only ones who can get the
job done. Like right goddamn
now
.”

“Nothing new on Ann?”

“Not this time, but it will come, Cal. John Cody and his team do not strike me as the type who will quit until a job is done.”