Philippine Hardpunch Page 14

  “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.”

  “Unless,” Jeffers said, with a dark look in his eyes, “they die trying.”

  The telephone rang.

  Simmons grabbed at it, feeling Jeffers’ gaze lock on him.

  “Simmons.”

  “Captain Leiter, sir. Thought maybe I ought to phone this one in, the way Jeffers is wound up.”

  Leiter was the officer who had just been in the office with them, Simmons’ man monitoring the Manilan police response to whatever the hell was going down at the Gilded Peacock.

  He felt a shiver of premonition raise the tiny hairs on the back of his neck.

  “What is it?” he asked in a voice he hoped sounded normal enough to Jeffers.

  “It’s coming in as I speak, sir. Cody and his team, and that Renault they were chasing.”

  “Yes?”

  “There’s, uh, been one hell of a smashup on the Makati. Police and militia are responding. No ID yet, but there’s at least one dead.”

  The Renault came out of its second full flip-over, skidded onto its left side across some more pavement yardage before striking like that full-force into the raised median divider between the north-south streams of traffic.

  Cody piloted the Lancia to evade a collision with the swerving, braking Toyota pickup.

  Screeches and clouds of dirty burnt-rubber smoke smudged the misting rain that made the pavement a shiny mirror of slick darkness, vehicles swerving, braking, drivers panicking, the smashing of some cars plowing into others or sideswiping from behind in the instant it took for the initial Renault smashup to occur.

  Cody braked the Lancia to a stop next to where the Renault had come to a rest, the Renault a crunched, crushed, indented, shriveled pile of hissing, wheezing, glass-dropping ruin in the far left lane.

  The Renault rested on the driver’s side. There was no sign of any stirring from within.

  Cody’s team leaped from their three doors of the Lancia before the car had fully stopped and Cody joined them as soon as he had pulled on the handbrake and left the vehicle with its engine idling.

  Rain hazed across the scene.

  He ran to where Murphy, Caine, and Hawkins stood circling around what remained of the Renault.

  “Gotta get her out before this baby blows,” Murphy grunted.

  He reached up to unlatch the skyward-facing passenger door.

  People from some of the stalled-out cars behind them came running forward to help, excited, inquiring shouts filling the air.

  Cody heard several different types of sirens drawing nearer at full speed from seemingly every direction. He raced to Murphy’s side to peer into the car’s remains with him. He heard more collisions from behind and one from the lanes moving slowing to rubberneck, some not, the rain making the pavement treacherous.

  The first thing he saw inside the Renault was the blood splattered across the dashboard, the shattered-out windshield, the roof of the car, everything. Thick, murky, dripping stuff like deep-red paint splashed too thickly across everything so it drip-drip-dripped, except that it wasn’t paint: it was the innards of Mara Zobel, who had been skewered by a huge, dull-edged sword.

  Above her, in the side-turned car, splattered with muddy little droplets of the other woman’s blood and guts, Ann Jeffers, seat belt draped in place, hung there with her head bent forward, her hair a cascade covering her face.

  For a moment Cody thought the poor kid was dead, then he faintly heard vague moaning emanating from the girl’s lips.

  “I’ll unstrap her, Sarge,” Murphy grunted, forcing his big bulk on tiptoes so he could reach in to release the latch of the seat belt. “You pull her out.”

  Cody wedged his way around Murphy, got his arms to encircle the waist of the semiconscious young woman.

  Hawkeye and Caine turned to wave back the motorists coming forward to help or gawk.

  “And here comes the cavalry,” Hawkeye growled, “only it ain’t ours.”

  Flashing emergency lights could be seen piercing their way through the traffic in either direction, the nearest flashing lights and sirens atop two Manilla PD squad cars and one Filipino army vehicle, a helmeted solier manning the machine gun, already training the weapon on Cody and his pals.

  Cody lifted Ann Jeffers effortlessly up, out, and away from the Renault, and, although the danger of explosion from a ruptured gas tank appeared past he and Murphy bolted away from the wreckage with the girl cradled in their arms.

  Official vehicles skidded to rocking stops in front, beside, and behind the Lancia.

  “What now, Sarge?” Hawkeye asked.

  Men tumbled from the vehicles to advance with their pistols out. The machinegunner in back of the army vehicle kept his M-60 aimed at the tight group coming forward from the Renault’s wreckage.

  “I suggest this is where we play cricket with these chaps,” Caine offered.

  At a barked command, the uniformed men facing them across the rain-swept pavement halted to pull their weapons directly on Cody and his group, too.

  A uniformed officer barked at Cody from behind the two-handed, straightened arm of his pistol.

  “Halt right there! Come one step closer and we will open fire!”

  Cody stopped with the girl in his arms, and his men stopped with him.

  The armed officials moved forward to surround them.

  It took some doing, some real finagling, as Hawkeye put it. Simmons had pulled some mighty high strings through a General O’Donnell.

  Cody yielded custody of Ann Jeffers when the proper paramedics arrived.

  His top security ID papers impressed the Manila cops and Filipino army guns on the scene enough to keep Cody and company on ice while the thing was cleared out to the top.

  They sat them in separate squad cars, cars that did not have handles on the inside doors, and because he had no choice, he sat there and watched the rainy scene of the Renault wreckage being cleared away and the gruesome removal of Mara Zobel’s corpse from the steering column.

  After ninety minutes, the word came back down to release Cody and his team without delay.

  They had proceeded directly back to Clark Air Force Base in the Lancia to gather again in the briefing room with General Simmons immediately upon their return.

  Cody had utilized the period of enforced inactivity back in that Manila PD cop car at the accident scene to relax, to recharge his inner batteries, so to speak, and he could see that his men had done the same.

  They did not look like guys who had just been through a brawl, a high-speed car chase, following an assault on a jungle guerilla base at dawn of that same morning.

  The late afternoon outside the briefing-room windows had stopped raining but the low, ominous cloud ceiling threatened a rough night of weather ahead.

  Cody felt a curious combination of relief, and a building anticipation to get this job done.

  Relief that Ann Jeffers was once and, one hoped for all in caring hands, the Jeffers family reunited, and, at the same time, an irresistible itch to get down to the nitty-gritty of tackling this Something Big he had sensed from almost the very beginning of this Philippine hardpunch.

  Simmons had listened to his recital of the events at the Gilded Peacock, and a
fter—with his back to the men seated around the table as before, the general’s back ramrod stiff, his hands clasped behind his back. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking.

  Cal Jeffers was on hand and nothing but relief showed on his beaming features. He sat with Hawkins, Caine, and Murphy, hearing out the last of Cody’s report.

  The report, Cody realized, was a courtesy. His authorization sanctioned his full discretion in who had a Need To Know what, but it was a courtesy he chose to extend because he knew that once he said what he had to say, the uneasy honeymoon with Simmons would be finished.

  “—and we got back here straight from the accident scene,” he concluded.

  Simmons did not turn or alter his stance. He continued staring ahead through the glass at the gray, depressing afternoon.

  “Let me get this straight. You’re guessing Valera had the Zobel woman stake out the base here after they got word that the Jefferses had been rescued this morning, because they figured we’d bring them either here or to the U.S. facility at Subic Bay. But, they couldn’t have figured they’d learn much from two nightclub bouncers posted outside our main gate.”

  “It was a long shot,” Cody agreed, “and they obviously didn’t expect much to come of it or they wouldn’t have sent two stumblebums like Ramos and Jorges. Jorges is singing his ass off already to try to bargain his way out, so it’s not all guesswork, General. I got that much out of the cop on the scene when they let us go.”

  Jeffers said, “At the point where Valera told this Mara Zobel to send those guys over here, no one really knew who you were, did they? They were only guessing who had rescued us, you or the Filipinos.”

  “So they got lucky and got Ann,” Murphy summed up.

  Caine added, “And we got lucky and got her back.”

  “Good timing, us walking in on that honky-tonk right when we did.” Hawkeye chuckled. “Maybe I won’t go back there for a while after all.”

  Jeffers said to the group of them, “You saved my daughter’s life twice this day. I’ll never be able to repay you men.”

  “It evens out,” Cody assured him with a grin. “You gave us the initial pieces of the puzzle. Cal: Javier, Valera, and the New People’s Army.”

  “I’ve got a feeling,” Caine said, “that those bloody little North Korean vermin will tie into this somewhere soon.”

  Simmons turned from the window like a man who’d heard enough.

  “That’s the part I don’t like, and the stuff the girl gave our people a little while ago, about a large estate in Pasay they were supposed to be on their way to. Zobel told her that much before the accident. Valera has a large estate in Pasay. The woman could have meant no other place. And where does that leave us?”

  Jeffers stood up.

  “Gentlemen, I’m going to excuse myself. You’ve been more than kind to allow me to sit in on this as far as you” have.”

  Cody said, “Your place right now is with your wife and daughter, Cal. Thanks, buddy.”

  “That’s a laugh,” the guy grunted with the first real grin Cody had seen on Jeffers’ face since thier association this crazy day had begun. “Thanks, each and every one of you, on behalf of my whole family from the bottom of our hearts.”

  Jeffers shook hands with each man in the room, then left them alone to hash this thing out, what Cody had expected.

  “We’ve got something to settle now, Cody, you and I,” Simmons started off. “You were authorized to come into, and I was authorized to support, a rescue mission which has been successfully concluded.”

  “The powers that put this thing together are not about to abort something this big because the madam of a brothel died in a car wreck.” Cody eyeballed him back. “Those forces, the Marcos factions here and abroad, they’ve put together one hell of a bang for this bunch of islands, General.”

  “Yes, Cody, but you don’t have any proof of any of this.

  Hawkeye snarled, “I’d like to see you add it up any other way, two star.”

  Caine tactfully ticked off on his fingers the factors involved, before tempers could flare.

  “These forces, if we’re going to call them that, order Javier to set it up. He’s the most powerful of the bunch, with his own private, highly trained army. Javier has Valera bring Javier together with the New People’s Army. Valera also lines Javier up with Manila’s underworld and Valera’s connections throughout the islands.”

  “Hell, it’s happened before,” Hawkeye snorted. “Remember when Crazy Horse got all the Indian nations to forget their differences and form one united front against a common enemy?”

  “I remember it.” Murphy nodded. “They called it Custer’s Last Stand.”

  “And this could be the last stand for what little hope remains for this battered country, General,” Cody told Simmons. “What this means is that Javier has lined up the NPA, he’s lined up his own private paramilitary force, he’s lined up every gunman-for-hire with an Uzi in the Manila underworld, and he’s got fat cats like Valera fronting for him, ready to set the political wheels in motion for a complete takeover from top to bottom.”

  “We’ve got to bring the Filipinos in on this,” Simmons snapped. “They’re already hopping mad… You’ve got one more hour, maybe two, and what’s happened with the Jeffers family and this theory of yours is going to be in their hands whether we like it or not.”

  Cody got to his feet.

  “Then we’d better not waste any more time sitting here talking about it.”

  “Talking about what, goddamn it?” Simmons detonated. “Don’t you understand my position at all? I’m on your side in this.”

  “We know that, General. It’s just that you’re tied up by the rules, by diplomacy and protocol. We’re not.”

  “You were sent here to secure the Jefferses’ freedom from communist hands.”

  The men of Cody’s Army pushed their chairs back and rose to their feet together to drift toward the door to the hallway even as the exchange between their boss and the two-star general continued.

  “Check out our authorization with Pete Lund,” Cody suggested. “There’s a bloodbath about to happen, but if we’re not too late already, we may stand a shot at short-circuiting this Javier’s plan. They’ll be massed, concentrated, easier for us to hit.”

  Hawkins, Caine, and Murphy filed out of the briefing room.

  Simmons took a step forward.

  “You’re going out to Valera’s spread in Pasay? You can’t do that, Cody!”

  “What I can’t do, General,” Cody interrupted in a low voice that was pure steel, “is turn my back on this. Get through to Lund. In the meantime, my men and I are going to gear up, and then we’re gone.”

  Cody was gone then, closing the door behind him.

  Simmons stared at that closed door and suppressed an urge to kick it oft’ its hinges.

  “Goddamn you, Cody,” he snarled at the empty briefing room. “Goddamn you… and God bless you.”

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  Arturo Javier looked up irritably from the maps he had been studying when the sounds of a man screaming at the top of his lungs from somewhere nearby outside his tent shattered the humid afternoon air.

  The rains had passed, making the heat worse than before, the jungle around this makeshift staging area nothing but a steambath; mist rising from the ground, the dripping sounds of water falling from everything.

  The low, black cloud cover made the natural stench of vegetative decay around them ten times worse, the ground nothing but sucking mud even in his private tent.

  He had been pondering this necessary shift in the wake of what had happened at Locsin’s camp and had been thinking about the coming confrontation with General Chung of the North Korean UNG II.

  Chung was due at any moment.

  One of Javier’s troopers appeared at one opened end-flap of the tent and stood sharply at attention.

  The male screeching climbed in decibels till it became like a woman being cruel
ly tortured. The thought intrigued Javier.

  “What is it?”

  “A government informer,” the trooper reported. “They’ve tied him to a tree. I was sent to tell you, sir.”

  Javier grabbed his military cap.

  “Let us have a look.”

  He strode from the tent through the muck of the staging area.

  The screaming tapered off to whimpers, then ceased altogether.

  This should be interesting, Javier told himself. And diverting.

  The sun was beginning its arching descent into the west.

  Tonight.

  Tonight Operation Thunderstrike would strike.

  His thoughts had been occupied with nothing else, naturally, especially not since the fiasco involving Locsin and that kidnapped American family and the firefight with that commando strike force, whoever those swine had been.

  Upon his return to his base after executing Locsin, he had ordered the peasant girl he’d left tied to his bed in his trailer to be taken out, destroyed, and buried so that nothing about her disappearance would lead to him.

  There was no more time for pleasures of the flesh.

  The intervening hours since then had been spent in relocating both the New People’s Army force, now commanded by Escaler, and in simultaneously relocating Javier’s group.

  The two forces, this most unlikely alliance of communist insurgents and ex-Marcos cronies, had established this new staging area some fifteen kilometers south of their previous camps.

  Hardly an ideal situation, Javier knew. They did not have a walled or fenced perimeter, though he’d ordered men of both forces to be heavily positioned in a perimeter and others sent to heavily patrol the surrounding jungle, a jungle remote and all but uninhabitable, the principal reason Javier had chosen this as an alternative contingency site when he had decided on the previous two areas for his force and the NPA to set up several weeks ago.

  Though security here was not all he would have wished, he felt safer having these unwashed Marxists close at hand, where he could keep an eye on them. He had vowed to himself that there would be no more slipups like the one that had cost that idiot, Locsin, his worthless existence.