Philippine Hardpunch (21 page)

“Part of that low security profile those dudes are maintaining,” Murphy pointed out, still scanning through his binoculars,
“will work in our favor.”

“Company,” said Cody.

The others swung their binoculars around to hone in on his line of vision.

An armored personnel carrier, an urban assault-type vehicle, chugged down the rise behind them in the rain, descending the
blacktop road past their position, the vehicle’s diesel fumes polluting the clean ocean air.

It was getting dark enough this gloomy night for the driver of the vehicle to have his headlights on, but there remained dusky,
dirty light enough for Cody to make out the side markings on the vehicle: the insignia and ID numbering of the Filipino Army.

“Looks like the senator’s throwing a real shindig.” Murphy grinned.

Hawkins grinned, too, with some anticipation.

“Shoot, this cowboy ain’t been to a party with a real live senator since, hell, I can’t rightly remember when.”

“Uh, I hate to appear overly practical,” Caine interjected, “but I find myself wondering what size manpower they may have
amassed down there waiting for us.”

“My reckoning is a dozen or so more, if that baby’s full,” Hawkeye said with a nod at the armored vehicle.

The personnel carrier passed the point where the highway curved well past and below their position, continued on another half
kilometer, then braked at Valera’s front gate, where the sentries in rent-a-cop security uniforms appeared to be expecting
it.

A sentry down there ambled over to the truck and examined some papers the driver showed him; then the iron gate opened.

The personnel carrier rolled in and to a point out of sight for the high-ground position taken by Cody—not high enough to
see every part of the property inside Valera’s stone walls, but the best vantage point they could find on short notice.

“It doesn’t matter what their manpower is,” Cody said, matter-of-factly. “We’re going in. We’re going in soft, just two of
us. You and me, Rufe.”‘

“Aw, Sarge,” Hawkeye griped.

“That is an awful lot to ask,” Caine agreed with Hawkins. “Me and Hawkeye sitting out here while you two—”

“Who the hell is asking,” Cody snarled. “It’s me and Rufe. We’re not here to engage this bunch. We’re going for the head.
For Javier. Mr. Warlord. Valera is the only lead we’ve got. I want to get him out of here alive so he can take us to Javier.”

“Alive?” Rufe repeated. “That could be kind of a tall order, Sarge, even for you and me if that place in there is blanketed
with troops.”

“It won’t be blanketed,” said Cody. We can see half the property from up here and we’ve only seen enough uniforms to let us
know that something smells. One or two would be unusual. We’ve counted what, ten, moving about here and there.”

“Valera is playing host to a pack of bad apple army guys,” Hawkins summed up, “but they’ve got to stay inside. Someone strolling
up here, a helicopter flying by overhead, somebody could innocently spot any kind of obvious troop buildup and report it.”

Murphy shrugged and affectionately patted the Ingram strapped over a shoulder and held to his side.

“We get inside, we’ll stand a chance at handling any close-quarters trouble.”

“We’ll try to avoid even that,” said Cody. “Hawkeye, Richard, you wait here. Be ready to give us cover fire if we need it.”

“And you damn well will, is my guess,” Caine grunted sourly. “I hardly care for sitting this one out.”

Hawkins said, “Me and the teabag could—”

Cody expected these men to question his decisions from time to time. Each and every one of them as an outcast in his own way—from
both civilian life and military discipline. This, combined with their combat capabilities, was what made them the best at
what they did.

This was no ordinary unit, and Cody was damn proud of that. He welcomed the input of these men, whose combat savvy matched
his own. They might question his strategy, but never his leadership. That too had been inbred in the bonding between them
forged in the fires of battle that made this team what it was, and he knew the reasoning for Murphy’s and Caine’s dissatisfaction.
They hated seeing half the team running the full risk.

Cody would have felt the same way.

He lowered his binoculars, unstrapped them from around his neck and set them inside the opened hatchdoor of the van parked
behind them. He cut in on Murphy’s offer to assist them.

“Sorry, Hawkeye, Richard, but we can hope for a soft probe by me and Rufe. We’re going to try to get our hands on Valera.
That will be easier with two of us than it will with four. It’s going to take a feather touch if it stands a chance at all.”

“Sarge is right,” Rufe decided. “We won’t have time to go to work on Valera, if we do get him, to make him tell what Javier’s
got and where.”

“Yeah, you’re figuring it right,” Hawkins conceded. “If we bring Valera with us, he’ll take us to Javier to stay alive.”

“Hawkeye and I will be here when you get back, with all the firepower you’re likely to need,” Caine assured Cody and Rufe.
“Sitting on our bums until then is going to be another matter entirely.”

“Let’s move out,” said Cody.

He and Murphy broke from the rocky crag and started a fast slip-slide descent down the incline through balsa trees crowding
the grassy incline, an incline that continued to within less than one hundred feet of stone wall that towered up toward the
leaden unholy sky like some primordial monolith.

A careful scan of what could be seen of the estate inside those walls had revealed that this corner spot of the wall they
approached was kitty-corner from one corner of the main building, approximately a hundred yards from the wall. They sped along
without a sound across the damp ground.

Shadows had lengthened to elongated shadings against the gray ness, a world taking on the end of day. Those rumbling clouds
that kept threatening more than a needle spray were saving their big blow for sometime later.

Cody and Rufe gained the base of the wall, each man unfastening the climbing rope from his combat webbing.

The rain would work for them. As Hawkeye had pointed out, security here had to be low profile, of necessity; Valera and his
traitorous army pals could not afford to show their hand yet, and it was always easier to penetrate a defensive setup like
this when the elements were at their worst, when the sentry’s inclination is to walk with his head bent down against the uncomfortable
cold that has already chilled him to the bone.

Rufe and Cody stood side by side several feet out from the wall and lassoed the climbing ropes over their heads to fling at
the top of the wall.

Rufe’s metal-pronged rope end caught on the one-foot-wide brick up there, but Cody’s rope fell back down. He caught it, tossed
it again and the prongs latched on up there with a second try; then the two of them started up that wall, pulling themselves
while they “walked” up the side of the wall, hand over hand.

Cody had counted three sentries at the gate house in the east wall and one walking three-man patrol, the only outward signs
visible from this distance of the force that was most likely mobilizing here for tonight.

And it was chow time.

There would be one or more buildings closer in toward the north wall, Cody figured, guest houses that, if he read this thing
right, would have been taken over by these about-to-mutiny soldiers as temporary barracks and right now could well be packed
with troops. You always had to count on the worst happening. It was a good way to avoid being surprised. But coming over at
this point of the wall, if that’s what he and Murphy would find just inside, it would also be a realistic guess that the commanding
officer of those troopers would be allowing them to hog down as much nourishment as they could if a major offensive against
the government was coming up. There was no way of knowing in something like this when your men would have a chance to slow
down again for anything more than field rations.

Cody did not kid himself.

It sounded like it might work, this plan of his to kidnap Javier, but it was a real long shot.

But he saw no other way.

He and Rufe hoisted themselves atop the wall together, flattening out up there, each man hastily rewinding the climbing rope
to reattach on his webbing.

Lights were already on in the massive, three-story house.

A line of three modern guest houses lined along inside the wall, the closest two hundred meters east from the corner at which
Cody and his partner paused.

What Cody had not expected was to find the three-man sentry patrol passing by directly beneath them: three guys in private
security service uniforms, except that their weaponry—American M-16s—and their shoulder-to-shoulder slogging through the rain
in at least a semblance of military bearing stamped them as infantrymen on guard duty.

The roiling, pregnant heavens chose that instant to sear the black-cloud ceiling with a giant strobe-light show that lasted
long enough to turn the gloom to brighter than sunlight, a barrage of thunder humping the atmosphere, causing one of the sentries
to idly glance up.

In that lightning, he saw the two commandos perched atop the wall in the rain.

*      *      *

Maceda helped himself to another glass of his host’s sherry without bothering to offer Valera a taste of his own private stock.

Valera sat in a wingchair near the opened screen door leading out to the patio behind his private library, three walls of
the room lined floor to ceiling with leather-bound volumes, about one-third of which he had managed to read since having been
born into all of this, a sole child, his parents long since deceased.

The library was usually dominated by the immense oak desk, now cluttered with maps and dispatches, but at this moment, Valera
thought, the arrogant, strutting Maceda’s brutish presence dominated this room.

They had heard another of the military vehicles pull up in front of the house, as had been going on sporadically all of the
previous night and seemed to be now resuming.

A brisk knock at the library door.

Valera started to bid “enter.”

Maceda, standing behind the desk, snapped, “Enter.”

An officer of the Philippine Army, a man in his midthirties whose stitched name tag across one of the breast pockets of his
uniform read
Durano
, stomped in, assumed attention and rendered Maceda a salute.

The general returned the salute with equal smartness.

“Welcome, Lieutenant.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You were not followed?”

“No, sir.” The lieutenant smiled ever so slightly. “On maneuvers, sir. Overnight bivouac.”

Maceda’s smile was an oily thing.

“Have your men unload into the middle guest house along the north wall. They’ll find food. Have them wait with the others.
They must remain inside, you understand, out of sight even after dark.”

“In this weather, that should be an order they’ll appreciate.”

“The weather will work for us this night, Lieutenant. Have them ready to move out at a moment’s notice.”

“Yes, sir. They already are.”

“They can all be trusted?”

“Implicitly. I know every one of these men personally that I’ve brought along, my general. They are from families loyal to
what was. They themselves were loyal to our former president. They are now treated like outcasts, scorned, barely tolerated
by their fellow servicemen and the public. They are ready to serve to the death for what can be ours.”

“What
will
be ours,” Maceda barked. “See to it then, Lieutenant, then return here to join us.”

“Yes, General.”

Again the saluting. Durano left.

Valera was again alone with Maceda, and with his thoughts.

“Your lieutenant,” he said to the man behind his desk, “did not even deign to acknowledge my presence. My dear general, I
must insist upon some respect in my own home. I have fulfilled my part in our bargain, have I not? My forces are aligned throughout
the islands, my associates in higher places are prepared to move as well, and yet I somehow get the feeling that I am a prisoner
in my own home; that we are not associates, that you are here to keep an eye on me.”

Maceda finished his carved glass of sherry with a careful sip, set the glass down on the desk and remained standing, eyeing
him across the room with that icy, impersonal glare that always made Valera want to look away.

“Months of planning, and this is the night it happens, or begins,” Maceda intoned. “Troops moved into place, alliances formed,
Operation Thunderstrike about to become a reality… and a fool named Valera risks it all.”

“If you mean that phone call about what happened at the club—”

“Of course I mean that, imbecile.” Some emotion crept into the general’s clipped diction, something like loathing; disdain.
“We are lucky the Americans have managed to contain what happened on Mindanao this morning from the media for as long as they
have, not to mention our government. When Durano returns, I shall have him double security in case we have been traced here
through your bungling.”

“But that at the club awhile ago, that was not my doing,” Valera protested. He decided to pat his pockets as if looking for
one of his cigars, giving himself a second or two, a reason to lower his eyes free from that glare of Maceda’s that reminded
him of an executioner’s eyes just before the axe fell.
Why am I thinking these things?
he wondered.
I have never liked nor trusted this man!
A growing sense of panic rippled deep in his psyche and his flesh felt clammy. “Mara Zobel is dead,” he reminded Maceda,
not finding a cigar in any of his pockets. “They will learn nothing from the dead.”

“What happens to you means little to me,” Maceda stated. He gazed around, his hands on his hips in an attitude of rude, expansive
arrogance. “I have grown to like it here during my infrequent visits. Without you around, Vincente, this could be a very pleasant
place.” He glared back at Valera. “I have my contacts in the Manila Police Department and the military, of course, but curious
things are happening. I’ve told Javier, but he discounts it. When I find out how much they’ve learned about us, I will pass
it on to Javier on Mindanao. That will decide your fate.”