Sudden Threat (40 page)

“McAllister?” Zachary asked.

“Garrett?” the voice responded.

It was too good to be true. Bob McAllister was the A company commander from his battalion.

“Bob McAllister, the dateless wonder?”

“Since you left, not the case my friend. Riley and her sister say hello,” McAllister said, not moving.

“Ease off, guys,” Zachary said to the young privates. They did so warily. Their wires were strung tightly. They kept trained eyes on the five men as they passed. Then they saw their commander and Captain McAllister hug each other.

“I never, in my wildest dreams, thought I would be glad to see your ugly ass here,” Zachary said.

“Well, you’ve got a lot more than my ass to deal with. The whole stinkin’ battalion just landed about twelve klicks northwest of here. Pave Lows flew us in. I’m the lead. Got any hot chow?” McAllister said.

“Yeah, right. Take out the ‘hot’ part, and you’d have a good question,” Zachary strained.

“Yeah, that’s what we’ve heard. You guys kicked ass, though, man. Whole division’s talking about you like you’re Rambo or some shit,” McAllister said.

McAllister was a ROTC officer, commissioned from the University of Massachusetts. He was cocky but always backed up his bullshit with proper action. He had knotty red hair that sometimes looked too long. Freckles splashed across his face in asymmetrical disarray. He was average height and looked like a ruffian, which he was.

“I’d love to stay and bullshit, but we’ve got to call back to the Buckster and let him know we found you weenies,” McAllister said, kneeling and grabbing his radio microphone from his RTO. He radioed the battalion commander and informed him that he had affected linkup. Buck seemed beside himself in his response, as if he never expected it to happen. He delivered an order to proceed as planned, and McAllister handed the handset back to his radio operator.

“The Buckster, you gotta love him,” he said, shaking his head with a huge grin. “Hey,” Mc-Allister said, “did you know Riley and her sister each has a mole underneath her left breast. Talk about genetic symmetry—”

“Not a good time for the sex jokes, McAllister. Now move out before we get fired up. This is the real thing, dickhead,” Zachary said, half-joking, half-serious.

“Trying to lighten you up a little. You’re gonna need it when you find out our next mission. Here,” McAllister said, handing him a stack of letters. “She sends her love and misses you.” Zachary rifled through the stack; nothing from Amanda.

McAllister patted Zachary on the back, grabbed his radio operator, and moved out.

The news traveled through the company like a lit fuse. After talking with Buck on the radio, Zachary went back to his CP, lay down, and went to sleep. Buck would have a meeting in the morning.

Looking at the letters from Riley, oddly enough, he thought of his brother, Matt, wondering where he could be.
Sure would be nice to get him in here to help us out,
Zach thought to himself.

Where can he be?

The thought slipped away from him though, as he spiraled into a much-needed sleep.

CHAPTER 70

Near Fort Magsaysay, Luzon Island, Philippines

It had been twenty-four hours since Rathburn had been snatched from their cell, and Matt wondered if he would ever see the man again. Maybe Mick Jagger had saved him, who could tell?

“You’re sure you never saw Zachary?” Matt said, stepping toward Barefoot.

“Yes, for the tenth time. I got there and the place was vacant. Looked like a hell of a firefight had taken place, though. Spent ammo everywhere. Bloodstains. No bodies. It was weird. I started snooping around the barracks and got waylaid by a bunch of little zipperheads,” Barefoot said.

“Roger,” Matt replied, dismayed. For twenty-four hours they had tried breaking the door, picking the lock, and screaming to get a guard, but it appeared they were all alone.

“Wait, I hear something,” Barefoot said, holding up his hand.

The outer lock rattled, and the door opened, casting a bright yellow sunlit square across the green slime on the floor. Rathburn’s body fell with a thud, his head smacking the wet concrete.

Matt slipped behind the door while Barefoot stood in the middle of the small cell. Sturgeon was reaching into his boot for a Velcro-pocketed knife that his captors had overlooked as he squatted in the other corner. They had been over this as many times as Matt had asked Barefoot about Zachary.

“You all go next, Joe. Let’s go,” a different Filipino voice said.

Matt moved closer to the door, which began to open slowly, casting a brighter spotlight onto Rathburn’s body like some eerie floor show.

“Hey, Joe! Time to go!” the eerie voice called out again. Matt saw one shadow fall atop Rathburn’s body. Then another. They both appeared to have something in their hands.

The first guard stuck his head around the corner of the door, unable to see in the darkness.

“Hey, Joe!” he screamed. “Where Matt Garrett? You number one customer today!”

Matt stood slowly and rapidly wrapped his belt around the short Filipino’s neck, pulling the ends in opposite directions.

An errant shot escaped from the Chinese pistol, ricocheting off the wall and leaving a spark in its trail. The second guard responded immediately, pulling at Matt’s arm.

Matt punched the guard in the face and heard the clank of pistol metal striking the floor. Sturgeon moved on cue stood from his crouched position.

Matt snapped the neck of the first guard as Sturgeon leapt across the splash of light that separated him from the fight and drove the knife into the back of the second guard.

The guard, shorter than Matt, turned toward him as Matt pulled the pistol from the man he had just strangled, placed it against the advancing guard’s neck, and fired two bullets.

“Let’s haul ass,” Matt said, looking at the two dead Filipinos lying next to Rathburn’s body in the box of light that framed the bodies like a large coffin. He stripped the Filipinos of weapons, handed Jack a Chinese Type 67 pistol, and said, “C’mon” to Barefoot, who followed.

For the first time in days, Matt saw daylight as they exited the structure. They had been in the basement of a small adobe building. Leaving the cell, they found themselves surrounded by a high wall and a dirt ceiling, as if the cell had been cut into the ground. They were facing a stairwell carved into the dirt that led to the open skies. Matt carefully ascended the steps, then hesitated as the full brightness of the morning sun entered his dilated pupils.

He looked back at Jack, who was holding his own hand, almost doubled over in pain. Matt pulled a rag from his pocket and wrapped it around Jack’s hand.

“I don’t see anyone, but it’s full daylight so we’re gonna have to run. There’s a truck about twenty meters to the right. It’s running for some reason. Our best bet is to get in that mother and go.”

Matt stopped as they were nearing the pickup truck and said, “Rathburn. Never leave a fallen comrade.” He ran back down the stairwell and reemerged moments later with Rathburn’s body slung over his back in a fireman’s carry. It was the right thing to do.

“Let’s go,” Matt said. The three men ran across the hardstand to an olive drab pickup truck. Matt flipped Rathburn’s body into the back as Sturgeon opened the passenger door for Barefoot, who slid across the torn cloth bench seat. Matt quickly slammed the automatic gear level into drive and sped along the only road he could see.

The sun was to their backs, so he knew they were heading west if it was morning. To his front was flat or rolling countryside. He passed a series of buildings and saw a sign that read fort magsaysay. He sped past a gate onto a cement road that led off the gentle slopes onto a plain. It was an area of rice paddies, some terraced into the hills behind them and others lying low beneath the flat, flooded ground.

“What’s all that shit bouncing around in the back of the truck?” Matt asked, looking in the mirror. Barefoot turned and looked.

“That’s my film and commo gear. Remember, I was supposed to do a satellite linkup and conduct a live interview of your brother?”

“Zachary,” Matt whispered. “We’ve got to find my brother.”

Matt maneuvered around the patches of drying rice that farmers had laid on the cement road. He felt the noose that had been around his neck since landing in Manila slacken just a bit. .

His new mission:
find Zachary
… and they could join forces to fight their way out of there.

CHAPTER 71

Manila, Luzon Island, Philippines

Takishi rode atop the bridge of the lead ship as it approached the port of Manila. He watched in the darkness as the captain adroitly maneuvered the large commercial tanker alongside the international port just south of the Pasig River delta. The pier was 150 meters wide and 450 meters long.

Looking over his shoulder, he saw the huge rock outcropping of Corregidor Island, which guarded the mouth of Manila Bay. His countrymen had fought valiantly there. There would be no such fight again. American airborne forces would not come descending from the sky as they had almost sixty years ago to secure the mouth of the bay. He saw the second ship steaming past Corregidor and made a mental note that the other two should be docking at Subic about then. He wondered in amazement how his countrymen had developed such an awesome supertanker, and had actually converted ten of them to roll-on-roll-off military transport ships and even an eleventh to—well, he did not want to think about the
Shimpu
.

The
Shimpu
was an entirely different matter altogether.

Mizuzawa had made the decision to launch four ships, each carrying a nine-thousand-man Japanese combined arms division consisting of tank, infantry, and attack helicopter maneuver battalions after Talbosa had failed to cooperate on the three American hostages. He had planned to introduce force into the island of Luzon at some point in time, mostly for control purposes, but he believed that the situation could get out of hand rapidly if Talbosa turned on them. Control of the Philippines was absolutely vital to the remainder of the plan.

Takishi had flown in his Shin Meiwa to Mindanao to find Commander Talbosa in a small thatch hut in Cateel, recovering from wounds received in combat.

“When you told me about Garrett being in Magsaysay prison, I ordered them all executed,” Talbosa had told him. He had been shot and nearly fatally wounded. Only his familiarity with the Cateel area had allowed him to get to the beach, where some of the peasants had provided medical care and escorted him to Takishi’s airplane.

Takishi’s medical team had patched up Talbosa during the flight, and Takishi had a security team take Talbosa to the Presidential Palace, placing him “in charge.”

“You will respond to my every order, do you understand?” Takishi demanded.

Talbosa gave Takishi a long look and nodded. Weak from being wounded, he walked quietly into the Presidential Palace, where he was greeted by fellow warriors, who had executed their portion of the coup expertly.

“I thought I was close to your Matt Garrett until you told me where he was,” Talbosa said.

Takishi had looked at the weakened warrior and said, “Slippery son of a bitch.” Stone had contacted Takishi too late for either saving Keith Richards, Rathburn, or killing Matt Garrett. Takishi shook his head at the irony. There were minute degrees between life and death. If only he had gotten the word a day or two earlier, he could have saved his friend, Rathburn, and eliminated a major thorn in the side of the Rolling Stones, Matt Garrett. For the first time a jolt of sadness coursed through him as he realized his Harvard classmate, Bart, was dead … because of him.

After dropping Talbosa in Manila, he had flown to the location of the oil tankers north of Luzon in the Philippine Sea, landing his seaplane amidst the collection of ships. There he boarded the command and control ship,
Ozawa
, and radioed the prime minister with the news about the death of Rathburn.

Mizuzawa reacted sharply, fearing American intervention for the sake of revenge if nothing else. He had been pleased with the American president’s speech. They had guessed right. The Americans were focused on Iraq and stymied by an unexpected variable, the Philippines, for which they had no plan.

But protecting American lives was another issue. Would the Americans respond with military force and try to restore the democracy, using the deaths of a dignitary and the women as an excuse? It was possible. He was not willing to take the chance. They had been one step ahead of the Rolling Stones and needed to act before the Americans could foil their gambit.

If they could move immediately, gain a military foothold on Luzon, they would have checkmated the Americans, once again.
They
would appeal to the United Nations for a response to the situation. Mizuzawa knew the United Nations would not do anything about the revolution in the Philippines; they never did anything meaningful anyway.

Takishi felt the ship nudge the side of the cement pier. There was no activity in the large port area. The fighting had served to halt most of the commercial shipping. What was in the docks at the time of the revolution, the peasants had pilfered. The insurgents had not yet organized the Philippine naval vessels, though they had sunk several of the ships during the revolt. A few Corvette attack boats were still operational, yet were of no use to Talbosa until he could train some men how to operate them.

It was all coming together smoothly Takishi thought, and he sent Mick Jagger a text message.

we are achieving satisfaction.

Stone did not
need to know just yet that the Japanese were attacking the island of Luzon with the equivalent of four infantry divisions, about the same size force that the U.S. was planning on using in Iraq. Charlie Watts had played his part for the Rolling Stones, but his role had always been a means to an end, and he was going solo.