Philippine Hardpunch Read online

  He and the trooper, who kept a respectful several paces behind, tramped through the mud, past armored vehicles and lines of tents pitched by his men and the New People’s Army.

  At least, he reminded himself, they would be here for only another handful of hours. Valera and General Maceda were also due shortly, and, soon after that, his orders would be given to the units already in place throughout the islands, units made up of every stripe of this crazy -coalition, and they would strike!

  The man who’d heard screaming was tied, sitting, to the base of a tree. He wore the uniform of Javier’s troops, but the tunic had been torn open. Knife slashes, deep ones, dripped red pearls across his upper chest.

  A cluster of Javier’s troops stood bordering the tableau, and one of these men held a knife that was tinted crimson at its tip, the men regarding the para tied to the tree with contempt. As Javier and the trooper approached, some of the men started kicking the guy bound to the tree, brutal boot-smacks to the man’s chest and head.

  The man’s head sagged forward and Javier saw blood oozing from his nose and mouth, too.

  “How was he uncovered as an informant?” he demanded of the man with the knife. “Is there any doubt?”

  The others stepped back respectfully.

  This staging area had been hurriedly set up with lines of tents pitched by Javier’s men in even rows to the north, the communist insurgents setting down a more ragtag line of their tents in the rain to the south of an invisible point.

  This tree where the man was tied was approximately at one end of that invisible line, and men who had been huddling around small fires and in tents from both sides were drawn to this commotion.

  Javier saw, from the comer of his eye, Escaler approaching at a run from the direction of the NPA’s h.q. tent.

  “There’s no doubt, sir,” the man with the knife muttered in as respectful a voice as he could muster. This one’s name was Sante, Javier recalled. A hit man for the Burmese faction of the Golden Triangle until an international drug news crackdown had brought him to new climes, and into Javier’s employ.

  “He had a shortwave radio stashed just beyond the perimeter. We don’t know how he managed it but he was sending a signal to someone. We caught the pigfucker in the act. We can give you the details now or later of what we heard him say.”

  “Hand me the knife.”

  Sante handed the knife, handle first.

  Javier turned toward the man tied to the tree, who appeared to have passed out. He extended his left hand to grasp a handful of the informer’s dirty, unkept hair. He tugged at the hair with force enough to thwack the back of the man’s head against the tree trunk.

  The man gasped in pain, his eyes flying open.

  Javier chuckled. He did not recognize this one. He had ordered his ranks increased for Operation Thunderstrike. He wielded the knife so the blade wavered in slight, light-as-air circles near the informer’s jugular vein.

  “I thought you might be play-acting,” he snickered. “The time has come to talk, my unfortunate friend. What branch of government are you with?”

  Escaler reached them.

  “Stop!” he called. The newly promoted NPA commander stopped just short of grabbing at Javier’s hand holding the knife.

  Javier did not release the man’s hair or move the knife from inches away from the man’s pulsating jugular vein.

  The only sound in that moment seemed to be the frightened gaspings of the man tied to the tree.

  Javier said in a low, brittle voice to Escaler, “You speak with a tone of command. As if you have already forgotten who commands here.”

  Escaler worked at catching his breath.

  “I do not mean to appear disrespectful. I only… wish to be apprised of what—”

  “We have found a spy for the Manila government planted among my troops. I am dealing with him.” He looked at something happening behind Escaler. “And I have run out of time. Other matters need attending to, I see.”

  Escaler looked around.

  A Chor-7 bounced up the trail that led to the staging area, the trail down which the machinery of war would roll within a few hours. He recognized the vehicle, and the passenger in it.

  “General Chung.”

  “Precisely.” Javier nodded. He returned his attention to the bound man he held against the tree. “And, now that I think of it, it hardly matters what government unit you are with, my informing friend, nor does it much matter how you were planted here among us, or how much you have tried to pass along to your superiors. I’ve made sure that the big picture has not reached your level of rank and file. And in another few hours, none of what you could hve passed on will matter. Too bad you can’t pass that along, isn’t it? You might have earned yourself a promotion.”

  “Don’t kill me, please!!” the man wailed, forgetting about the wounds of his torture.

  Javier wondered in that flicker of time why he liked it so much when they begged for their lives, knowing they were seconds away from death.

  “Filth,” he hissed.

  He flicked the knife in a short, sharp slash, then stepped back, as did his men, as rich red blood spurted in a solid geyser.

  He snickered at the sickness he saw in Escaler’s eyes.

  “Perhaps you do not have the stomach for duty in the field, eh, Commander.”

  He emphasized that last word to make sure Escaler would understand.

  Escaler drew his back erect. The look disappeared from his eyes, which stared down at the ghastly sight of the man bleeding to death, the geyser reduced to a coursing series of bright rivulets that pumped from the neck wound to course across the man’s body and dissolve into the water-soaked loam.

  The sitting corpse shuddered for several seconds against the tree in death spasms, the outstretched legs fluttering upon the ground.

  “I only thought it prudent to find out what he knew before we… finished him,” Escaler said. “Security for this operation affects my men too.”

  “Your men.” Javier snickered. “That could change. / put you in command. I can take that command away from you.”

  Escaler turned to observe, with Javier, the stout, stubby form in an ill-fitting black suit emerge from the Chor-7 and briskly stride toward them.

  “With all due respect,” Escaler said, “perhaps we should hear what General Chung has to say about it. He does, after all, represent a power greater than either of ours, does he not?”

  “We shall see,” Javier mumbled to himself. He handed the knife back to Sante and indicated the dead man with a slight nod of his head. “See that this garbage is removed.”

  “At once.” Sante nodded.

  He began seeing to it, ordering some of the troopers to the untidy task of untying the corpse, which now stunk of released bowels.

  Javier moved off to meet Chung as if nothing out of the ordinary had just occurred.

  “General Chung, welcome to Mindanao.’

  Chung brushed away droplets of moisture and specks of vegetation picked up on the rough drive in the Chor-7 through the jungle.

  “This is a miserable anus of a place. I have no wish to indulge in pleasantries. I am here to oversee this New People’s Army detachment’s involvement in what you have chosen to call Operation Thunderstrike. The other principals are here?”

  Javier kept his true feelings from showing.

  “Senator Valera and General Maceda will be arriving shortly.”

  “The Americans are involved, did you know that?”

  Javier snarled, “How did you know that?”

  “We know everything,” Chung said impassively. He glanced at Sante’s troopers carrying away the dead informer. “Very messy.”

  “I believe in making examples,” Javier snarled. “And you are hardly here to oversee me, General Chung.”

  “You, and those you represent, have painted a most interesting picture of how things will be after tonight,” Chung said. “But, it has not happened yet.”

  “It will,” Ja
vier growled. He told himself to relax, not to push. this. “I need to speak with you in my tent, General.” He pointedly eyed Escaler. “Alone, if you please.”

  Escaler started to say, “But I—”

  “I want to know what happened to Colonel Locsin,” Chung stated, his impassivity intact. “There is a top secret unit operating out of Clark Air Base that is involved; it is all we know. They rescued the American family from you,” he snarled at Escaler, with a hint of emotion rippling the granite face.

  Escaler took a step back, Javier noting that the new NPA unit commander had quickly lost his pique at not having been invited to accompany them.

  “That was not my doing, General Chung. I have done nothing but loyally serve our cause since—”

  Javier chuckled to Chung. “As a matter of strict fact, General, Escaler here is telling the truth, and that ties in with your Colonel Locsin.”

  He started back toward his tent. Chung accompanied him.

  “I have been instructed not to interfere with your overall strategy or operations,” the North Korean told him as they walked back past the troopers already losing interest in the scene around the tree, returning to their own tents and small sputtering fires. “I must, however, insist on your honoring your promises to the New People’s Army when this operation is finished.”

  They reached Javier’s tent. Javier held back the flap and nodded Chung inside.

  “You don’t have to worry about a thing, General,” he said as he followed the Korean into the tent. He closed the tent flaps after them. “You’re not going to be around, no matter what happens.”

  “What is that you say?”

  Chung started to tum, his impassivity giving in to rising alarm.

  Javier came up on the shorter man with a stealth belying his apelike build. His left arm curved around under the Koreans throat. He raised a knee, pulling the UNG II agent back against it for balance, his left arm choking back the gurgle of alarm Chung did manage and which did not carry outside the tent. Javier brought in from behind in his right fist the stiletto he had hidden beneath the front of his fatigues. He buried that long, thin blade into the base of Chung’s skull, behind the right ear, sliding the blade in to the hilt, rapidly wiggling the stiletto as much as he could to scramble the man’s brain.

  With an abrupt jerk that almost tore Chung loose from his grip, the Korean’s frantic struggles expired. He uttered a bubbly sigh that sounded almost like a contented baby falling asleep. His body sagged in Javier’s grasp.

  Javier pulled out the stiletto and let collapse the second man he had slain in less than five minutes.

  No death spasms or jerkings from this one, he noted. He knelt down to wipe the blade clean by sliding it back and forth across the dead man’s clothing, then he secreted it beneath his shirt. Each man died differently, it seemed to him, and he had seen and caused many a man to die. I should set my thoughts down when this is over, he thought. But of course he would not mention such things as the pleasure inflicting death and pain brought him, for such matters were hardly to be linked to a man who would rule a great nation, if not tomorrow, then soon, very soon.

  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 tot
ed 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.