Philippine Hardpunch (20 page)

He had too much evidence of wrongdoing—corruption, murder—
proof
that he had been saving to use if those who had entrusted him with what he chose to call Operation Thunderstrike ever considered
reneging on their promises to him.

If the world had been rough on the Marcos regime at the time of his ouster, that would be nothing compared to what would happen
in courts all around the world should Javier release the damning evidence he had spent years amassing.

He turned to summon an orderly to fetch Sante.

Chung’s demise would be kept a secret, most especially from Escaler and anyone connected with the New People’s Army.

He intended to let it be known that Chung had been summoned away by his own superiors without prior notice. Javier’s men would
affirm whatever he told them to say when Escaler voiced the suspicions he surely would.

The important thing at this moment was that one troublesome element, the North Koreans, and through them the KGB, had been
canceled out of the equation, at least for the time being.

Escaler and his whole filthy communist crew would get the same later.

But not yet.

Javier had to snicker inside every time he thought about it. It would have taken powers of persuasion far beyond his own to
convince communists from the UNG II down to Valera down to these savages in the field like Locsin and Escaler that there was
ever any real chance of their sharing power with those like Arturo Javier and General Maceda, who had devoted their lives
to serving a power that would rule again.

But no, it was not yet time to deal with the vermin of the New People’s Army.

Valera and Maceda would be here shortly and then all he needed through this night was for Escaler and his force to fulfill
their part in Operation Thunderstrike. This would be the most important night of his life.

He stepped from his tent to summon the nearest trooper to fetch Sante.

The single thought that troubled him was Chung’s statement about the Americans being involved.

He had expected as much after the fight with that commando team that morning in the jungle and the heavy losses his side had
suffered.

Anywhere, anytime, only Americans fought as those hellions had!

What would the Americans do next?

They would do nothing, he told himself. They had their precious kidnapped family returned, and they had no personal stake
in what he had set into motion for this night.

He decided to double the security around the staging area perimeter, however, in case he was mistaken about those American
commandos and what they might do.

The white-walled, white-ceilinged hospital room practically vibrated with an antiseptic cleanliness.

Ann Jeffers looked like a different person from the moaning, semiconscious girl Murphy and Cody had rescued from the wreckage
of the Renault on the freeway a mere two-and-a-half hours earlier. She sat up in the bed, a virginal white shapeless smock
hiding her youthful figure, making Cody think of a waif rescued from the storm.

He had to smile to himself at that thought. It was the kind of line a kid named John Cody at Princeton a lifetime ago might
have penned into a Great American Novel. But it was gospel just the same.

Ann had been rescued from a storm not of her making out in the jungles outside this white room in a secluded wing at Clark
Air Base Hospital.

The kid looked tired, thoroughly exhausted, but there was that special radiance in her eyes, her face, which Cody had not
seen there since encountering her that morning at Colonel Locsin’s camp on Mindanao.

So much happening so fast, no small wonder the kid had lost some equilibrium and stumbled for a while.

She looked glad to be alive.

As did her mother and father, Louise and Cal, who sat in chairs on opposite sides of Ann’s bed, each holding one of their
daughter’s hands.

So far the media had not even been told of the family rescue. The Philippine government in Manila was being spoon-fed just
enough info to keep them from coming down like a house and shutting the whole act altogether.

Cody had not spoken with Simmons since their scene in the briefing room less than thirty minutes ago, but the general seemed
to be covering their collective ass thus far.

He did think it a little out of character that the Filipinos were pushing at it so tentatively, but there were other, far
more pressing matters for him to concern himself with as the grim day outside the windows grew darker.

News of the family’s rescue would be released shortly, but only after Cody’s Army had the chance to put distance between itself
and what would become the center ring of a media circus; the perfect diversion to cover the withdrawal of a strike force that
supposedly did not exist.

The team had hit the armory for the second time that day before stopping in at Ann’s room. They now wore dark civilian garb:
dark jeans, combat boots and black T-shirts. Each man toted a small canvas backpack over his shoulder, as if they were four
American servicemen out to do some exploring of the countryside or Manila while off duty.

The knapsacks, in reality, contained weapons, hardpunch munitions such as grenades, ammunition, and other tools necessary
for the work Cody had in mind.

But first, before leaving the base, they had come for a quick check on the Jefferses before heading off for Pasay, for Valera,
for the enemy’s Something Big.

Some things mattered more.

Like the humanity that gave it all meaning; the
caring
that worked beneath the rough and ready outer shells of men like Hawkins, Murphy, and Caine. Cody knew this from long association
with these men, going back to Nam.

The men of his team put their lives on the line, time after time, knowing that sooner or later they would end up tits downin
the mud with their guts blown out their backside in some dirty little war in a nowhere little corner of the world about which
no one gave a fuck or even knew about.

Men like these would not receive, nor did they deserve, anything better.

So why do we do it? He knew the answer to that was why the four of them had by unspoken mutual consent not considered leaving
without one short stop to see, to witness, to experience what it was all about.

The good of this earth,—who could be victimized because they would not or could not defend themselves—could be made safe by
the type of covert application of force that his “Army” specialized in.

The thing wasn’t over for the Jefferses, not hardly. They would have to face the traumatic emotional aftermath of their ordeal,
not to mention going over it again and again so Simmons could glean what he could to use against the NPA, and there would
come a time when they would have to face the staring eyes of the media.

And the wounds between child and parents would take time and work to heal, sure. Lots of that.

These three would live the rest of their lives with the psychic scars inflicted by slimeballs like Colonel Locsin and Arturo
Javier, but Cody could see, any fool could see, that a road to redemption, to a deeper, mutual love among the three of this
Jeffers family, was starting right here in this aseptic room, where a soldier named Cody, with the taint of death all over
him, suddenly felt about as comfortable as an Arab at a
bar mitzvah
.

“It will take time, I know, Mom and Dad,” Ann said contritely, “but with love, anything can be made better, can’t it?”

“Oh, it can, honey.”

Louise Jeffers looked like a different woman from the destabilized victim Cody had first encountered this a.m. at Colonel
Locsin’s base. A rest, and seeing her child again, had washed years from her and you could see the woman a gutsy guy like
Cal Jeffers had fallen in love with when their lives were young.

Jeffers looked almost as good.

“The general tells me the thing is already in motion to fade us from sight and put us underground again after the initial
hoopla dies down,” he told the four men in black who stood in a semicircle around the end of Ann’s hospital bed. “They’ll
give me another identity. Stateside this time.” He chuckled. “I insisted. Tell you guys the truth, corporate life in the Philippines
was getting kind of old. This isn’t the way I’d have chosen to terminate it, but running a shrimp boat off the Gulf Coast
sounds mighty fine right about now.”

Hawkeye gunned, “Ain’t too many commie guerillas down that neck of the woods, that’s for sure.”

Mrs. Jeffers looked into her daughter’s eyes and said, “It’s made us a real family again. Maybe that had to happen the way
it did. We have each other again.”

Cody said, “We have to leave now. We just wanted to check in.”

“You’ve been through a lot, folks,” Caine said, “but I believe the worst is over. You’ve
made
it.”

“We believe that, too,” Cal Jeffers said. “And wherever the hell you guys are heading to next… good luck.”

“Yes,” Ann echoed in a young woman’s voice that was steady and right again. “Good luck, you four incredible men.”

Cody gave the family the thumbs-up sign. “The same back at you.” He grinned, then he got serious with his men. “Okay, sixty
seconds are up. Let’s get on it.”

Cody was not into good-byes.

Nor were his men.

The four of them turned and let themselves out of that room without looking back. It was the only way to say good-bye in their
world.

They strode down the hospital hallway and out into the. darkening world.

A wind had come up off the ocean, cooling things, but with the chill of worse to come. Thunder rumbled like an extended drum
solo.

They headed directly toward the waiting civilian van with the smoked-glass windows. Cody took the wheel, Murphy rode shotgun
in the front bucket passenger seat next to him. Caine and Hawkeye clambered in the side hatchdoor with their death-laden knapsacks,
ramming the door shut after them.

Cody gunned the engine alive and aimed them out of there with a squeal of tires in the direction of the main gate.

Murphy looked out and up at the threatening sky.

“Looks like she’s gonna blow tonight.”

“In more ways than one.” Cody nodded.

The authorization he flashed at the MP at the main gate whisked them through and out into the real world.

He pointed the van south in the direction of Manila, and Pasay beyond, an expensive little gold coast strip separating Manila
Bay to the west from Laguna de Bay to the east.

No conversation passed among the four men as they drove along.

It was that time just before the dogs of war are turned loose, before the hellfire flares, when it’s all been said and all
a soldier can do is look inside his own feelings about the kill or being killed that is to come.

T
he light mist had resumed just after they passed the phony-quaint stretch of shops that made up Pasay.

The countryside beyond the town might have appeared pastoral and exclusive in the sunshine, but on this rainy, darkening evening,
a darkness in the elements matched what Cody felt inside.

He parked the van several meters off the blacktopped road that twisted down from a rise to travel across the extended shelf
of land and rectangled off into private, walled estates like the one several hundred meters below where he, Hawkins, Caine.
and Murphy now crouched at a point above the northwest corner of the high stone wall around Valera’s property.

They wore jackets against the driving mist. Beneath the jackets, each man wore his sidearm in a shoulder holster, and military
webbing of grenades, ammo, and penetration gear for another hit like the assault that morning on Colonel Locsin’s NPA base
on Mindanao.

The difference being, in Cody’s estimation, that the predawn hit had been in a remote jungle province while this was in the
lap of the remaining Filipino uppercrust who had thus far managed to hold onto their fortunes and reputations after the previous
regime’s ouster.

There had been little traffic along the blacktop after Cody had pulled off. He had followed a bumpy trail up into these woods,
where he parked the van so he and his men could creep over to a craggy outlook that afforded them a clear peer down onto much
of Valera’s estate and the public road that continued to run on past.

Head weapon for each man on this hit was a silenced Ingram MAC Model 10 machine gun, a short, compact SMG chambered for .45
ACP rounds in 30-round magazines, capable of unleashing an incredible 1,145 rounds per minute. The lightweight, diminutive
MAC-10 is accurate enough for short-range outdoor firing and is a vicious “room-boom” for close-in indoor action.

A fresh-smelling breeze nipped in off the ocean and gave the mist a bite.

From their high-ground concealment, they studied, with binoculars, what they could see of the inside of Vincente Valera’s
estate.

“No doubt about it, something unusual down there,” Caine said after a short while.

“You branded that one right, teabag,” Hawkins grunted. He worked up a load of chewn tobacco and let fly, barely missing the
Brit, who stepped aside just in time with an agility borne of long association with this Texan.

“No one would suspect an ex-senator, even a commie, of harboring a paramilitary force,” Murphy growled. “Wonder how many setups
like this one Javier’s got are stashed and ready to roll all over the islands.”

“The way it’s stacking up,” said Cody, “a hundred or more would not surprise me.”

“No matter how low a profile those lads are keeping down there,” said Caine, “they would hardly be risking massing like they
seem to have done if something wasn’t about to happen very soon.”

“Like tonight,” said Cody. “And look closer. Those aren’t Javier’s paras down there.”

“Hot damn, right as usual, Sarge,” Murphy grunted. “Goddamn, those are
government
uniforms!”

“That makes even less sense than Javier’s working with the communists,” Caine muttered.

“It makes the same kind of sense, old limey dude,” Hawkeye chided. “If this warlord’s taken the damn commies in on this big
thing of his, he’d damn sure call in his old-time cronies from the Marcos military.”