Cooke was hot and he had long experience in using the force of his personality to dominate soldiers. But this man didn’t back down. He didn’t even blink. Cooke noted it dispassionately even as he tried to cow the man. Once again he got a curious sense of something invisible pushing against him from the American. It was a subtle force, yet it made him pause.
The younger American named Connor looked at him with a hard expression, a brief flare of intensity. Then it subsided and he shrugged. “They have my teacher,” he said. “I’m going to get him back.” And the bleak simplicity of the assertion, combined with Cooke’s vague sense of a deep and odd power, made him back off.
The day was spent with Cooke in tense discussion with Aguilar and his sergeants. The troopers were told to stand down until dawn. A normal camp pattern reasserted itself. Eventually, the Filipino Special Forces team gathered in the mess hall for supper. The visitors from Manila sat at a separate table, all but ignored, to talk among themselves.
“Lotta chopper activity,” Connor said. Periodically, the building was rocked by the rotor wash and intense noise of military helicopters. He was watching through a screened door at the latest takeoff. The landing lights on the helicopters were beginning to glow more brightly as evening approached. “But I don’t get it. They’re empty.”
Art came up behind him. “I overheard Cooke and the Filipino lieutenant talking. They’re worried about security. Probably didn’t help that we arrived here with a police escort.”
“Reyes was taking no chances, I guess.”
“Maybe, but now they’re worried that maybe someone’s watching. So they’re probably spinning up a lot of activity and sending decoy helicopters all over the place in the hopes of distracting anyone who’s watching.” Art looked across the camp to the fenced-in perimeter and the wall of mountain and jungle that leapt up right outside the camp. He shrugged. “Better than nothing.”
They turned at the sound of raised voices. A sergeant was rousting the troops. They left their meals at the table and quickly filed out of the room.
“Hey, c’mon,” Micky said, jerking his thumb at the departing soldiers. “Looks like we’re on the move.”
Cooke was going over radio frequencies and map coordinates for one last time with the team leaders. He looked up as the Americans approached. They were clearly confused.
Cooke smiled. “Saddle up, gentlemen. We’re airborne in fifteen minutes.”
“I thought the insertion was for tomorrow morning,” Connor said.
“Maybe it is,” Cooke replied. “Maybe it isn’t. Lots of eyes watchin’ this place. Lots of locals workin’ here. You people come blowin’ into town with some government escort. You think that’s not noticed? So I scrambled some aircraft to keep ’em guessing, and stood the troopers down in case someone’s got ears inside the camp, if you follow. They see the mess hall gear up and figure we’re buttoned down for the night.” He winked. “Gives us maybe a little edge. I’ll take all we can get.”
“The samurai say that the difference between living and dying is often a matter of inches,” the younger American said.
Cooke eyed him suspiciously and thought,
I gotta take a philosopher
into a free fire zone!
But he said nothing in reply, just used both hands in a scooping motion to encourage them to get their gear. “You have ten minutes, gentlemen. Collect your gear. I’ll send someone for you when the Blackhawks are ready.”
Four Blackhawk helicopters swept down out of the darkening sky. One peeled off from the group, maintaining a security station some five hundred meters away. The remaining craft plunged down toward the ground, flaring up slightly at the last moment to soften the landing. Their strobe lights pulsed insistently, as if encouraging haste. The noise was tremendous. Men fought through the wash of the propellers, lumbering across the landing pad, heavy with gear. Non-coms shouted as the troops formed up in small clusters near individual choppers. Aguilar and Cooke stood at a distance, heads moving quickly from point to point, noting progress. At a nod from the lieutenant, a soldier led the visitors from Manila out to the landing zone. They staggered a little, lugging unfamiliar gear and reacting to the force of the helicopters as the first two pushed off, loaded with troops.
Cooke beckoned impatiently at the visitors, leading them to the third chopper. He was bellowing, but even so they could barely make it out. “Gear first! Make sure those weapons are secured and safeties are on!” They made their awkward way to the Blackhawk’s side. A crewman gave them a hand and they slowly loaded.
Above them, the two other troopships rose to a hover and waited, in formation at a station just off-center from the landing zone, for the third craft to join them. It was dark on the ground, though the pilots in the airborne craft could see a narrowing line of light along the hills on the western horizon. Cooke was urging the visitors into the last Blackhawk, focused on the urgency of the task, when something on the periphery of his vision caught his eye.
He saw the streak of light as it arched out from the dark perimeter of the camp. Cooke’s body reacted before his conscious mind did, and he yanked one of the Americans back out of the doorway, shouting at the top of his lungs at the pilot, and craning his head up to check the sky above them.
The rocket shot across the night sky. A second trailed it by less than fifty meters.
Two of them
, he thought pointlessly.
There are
two people firing
.
The first rocket engulfed the troopship in a blaze of orange. The second pilot, who had perhaps seen the incoming ordinance, jerked his craft out of hover, seeking altitude and distance. The security gunship vectored in to the source of the rockets, firing into the bush. But the second rocket had already locked on. It blew off the tail section of the second helicopter, and trailing smoke, the aircraft began to cycle violently, spiraling away for a time as the pilots struggled for a semblance of control. But the spin was too much, the various hydraulic systems failing almost simultaneously. The cockpit was flashing with warnings and failure alarms, the pilots felt the shoulder harnesses tighten against them as they struggled against the G forces being exerted in the spin. The second chopper slammed into the ground with a huge, rending crash of metal, its giant main rotor beating itself into lethal pieces against the ground.
Cooke was still screaming, dragging people out of the last chopper. He hunched his shoulders against the burning debris that was raining down on the landing area. Somewhere, a siren had started up and the crash vehicles were starting to arrive. Aguilar had already bolted for the crash sites, ashen faced.
The first Blackhawk burned, thick oily smoke disappearing into the night sky, its presence marked only by the heat and the smell. It was mostly the scent of fuel and oil, but underlying it was the stench of bodies burning. Cooke had smelled this before; it was something you never forgot. Soldiers were setting down foam to suppress the blaze, but he held no delusions about the outcome.
Men were running toward the other crashed helicopter. Here, there was little fire. But Cooke had seen it go down. He knew what a landing like that did. The pilots were strapped in. Their seats had springs in the base to mitigate the crushing impact that a crash had on the human skeletal system. Even so, Cooke doubted they would walk away from this one. For the troops riding in back, he knew that the results would be catastrophic.
“My God,” the Inspector from Manila breathed. They were grouped around Cooke, frozen into immobility.
Cooke flagged down a humvee heading for the crash. He jumped into the back. “Get back to the briefing room! All of you.” He sped away, toward the disaster.
In the darkness, the men looked at each other, silent amid the carnage.
She didn’t know how much more Yamashita could take. The beatings were systematic and prolonged. It was as if it were part of some bizarre training regimen at the camp. Each day, the guards would drag the
sensei
out and string him up between the posts on the practice field. Then the old man with the fan would emerge from the hut, his retinue of Arabs around him, alert to his every command, tense and yet eager. They were like children trying to please a stern parent. The others—the Filipinos who guarded the camp and lugged supplies in and out—would sometimes watch from a distance. Hatsue watched as well, wincing, her stomach muscles jolting tight in empathy, as Yamashita was beaten.
The old man would lecture his students, gesturing in a pantomime of technique, then indicate points on Yamashita’s body to be struck. He touched his victim lightly with his fan, cruelly teasing his victim with the knowledge of where the next strike would land. Hatsue watched how the old man moved around Yamashita, the set of his body, and the slight hint of tension in his movements. And after a time it struck her,
the old one is afraid of Yamashita
.
This gave the beatings a deeper savagery, a greater significance. The attacks were painful to see, but she set herself to it.
If Yamashita
can endure it, I can watch it
, she thought, her witness a silent act of solidarity.
After each session the guards dragged the
sensei
back to the cell. They smiled cruelly at her as they dumped him to the ground. Hatsue hadn’t been molested in any way since she came to the camp, yet the feral set of the guards’ teeth made her shiver. She tried to hide the reaction, hoping that the small acts of solicitude for Yamashita would prove a shield from fear and a ritual of protection.
As the beatings wore on over the course of days, it took longer and longer for Yamashita to recover. Invariably, he would drop to the floor of the cell, and curl up as if he were still trying to protect his stomach. Often, she could barely tell whether he were fully conscious. His eyelids almost closed, the whites moist, his mind gone a long distance into some other reality. She wondered sometimes whether he would ever return and felt a faint surge of panic at the idea of being once more alone with these men. She had come to rely on Yamashita’s presence.
But he always did return, eventually pulling in a ragged breath that seemed to draw him upright. More than not, Hatsue felt herself draw in her own breath in emulation and relief. She would gently sponge his face as he sat, quietly exploring the new damage the beatings had done. Occasionally, Yamashita would grunt or hiss as his thick fingers probed his torso, but that was the only overt sign he gave of suffering once he sat up.
“How can you stand it?” she asked in a whisper after the latest session.
The
sensei
probed thoughtfully around his mouth with his tongue. He silently took the jug of water she held to his mouth, rinsed it and spit carefully in the corner: a bloody wash of thick saliva. This latest beating had closed his left eye. The skin on one side of his face was bruised and shiny. His lips had been cut early on—whether from blows or biting them to keep silent, she couldn’t tell—and it was growing more difficult for him to speak.
Yamashita cocked his head to bring his good eye to bear on her. “Unhh,” he said, then cleared his throat to continue. “It is a skill of long development.” He looked down at his hands. When he had first arrived, they were strong and capable looking. Now they were merely swollen things on the ends of arms that rested heavily in his lap, capable of only limited movement. “When I was young, I thought my time in the
dojo
was used to develop skill with weapons. Now I see that it was merely prelude . . . to this.”
“To what?” she prodded.
He tried to smile, but it was obvious that the movement of his lips pained him. “You have heard the phrase,
gambatte
?”
“Hold out?” she said.
Yamashita nodded, a slight motion that was part of the economy of pain. “So. It was what our teachers would tell us—
gambatte
—when training grew difficult. Perhaps . . . ” he closed has eyes and leaned forward slightly. Hatsue could see the skin tighten at his temples as the force of the pain gripped him. After a time, he let out a faint “soooooo,” then continued. “Perhaps it was not an exhortation after all, but the true goal of our training. To endure.”
“But why?”
He ignored the question for a moment, his attention drawn to something else. “Listen,” Yamashita told her. “Something is happening.”
The
sensei
was one of the most observant people she had ever met. It was a judgment made by someone schooled in watching. Hatsue marveled at the acute level of Yamashita’s sensitivity, even now. She got up and peered out the window. The structure was made of stone and old timber, and her captors had placed ill-fitting shutters across the windows in place of bars. The gaps were wide enough to see through if you craned your head just right. The light was fading and objects in the distance seemed lightly veiled in a thickening blue mist, but she could still see well enough.
“There’s something happening by the communications hut,” she told Yamashita. Hatsue watched the men cluster around the building, heard the excited sound of their voices, and saw their congratulatory gestures. One of the Arabs ran to the old man’s hut to share whatever news had set the camp abuzz.
Soon there was more activity—an armed group formed, were given instructions, and then set off down the mountain path, flashlights bobbing through the trees until they were swallowed up by foliage and darkness. Others still in camp began to pack supplies.
“What is happening?” the
sensei
hissed.
“They have sent a group of armed men down the trail,” she told him. “They seem very excited.”
“Do they seem frightened?”
She glanced back at his hunched form. “No,” she told him, then thought for a minute, “they seem . . . excited.”
“Which trail did they take?”
The camp was sited on a small clearing just shy of the top of the hill—the military crest, Yamashita had told her. They could smell the sea not too far away, and there was an infrequently used trail that led in that direction; occasionally supplies would come in along this path. But most activity was oriented toward the trail that twisted down slope into the jungle trail that led to the highway where she had been delivered what seemed like a lifetime ago.