Philippine Hardpunch Read online

He controlled the province, yes.

  Not the NPA. Not even the troops sent here by Manila. He, Arturo Javier, controlled this part of Mindanao with the same brutality of an Al Capone or an Adolf Hitler.

  Yet this meant nothing in the eyes of women when they beheld his profound ugliness. He detested every line on his own visage: the sloping forehead, the blubbery lips, the tiny black pinpoint eyes low behind greasy, overfleshed cheekbones, and especially the shiny, jagged, long-healed knife scar that traveled from above his right temple and down across the right eye, across his nose from side to side, to curl his mouth up into a permanent, leering sneer.

  He had taken to ordering trusted lieutenants to have their men secure women for him—girls like this one, and he never much cared how they came to be here—and if anyone suspected who was behind the disappearances, they lacked the courage to come forward and make accusations.

  He heard the choppers outside revving up and the commotion of men grouping as his orders were carried out, his force mobilized.

  He stood there in the doorway for an extra moment, to watch the girl.

  Her eyes flickered wide open. She looked around, dazed, her unintelligent peasant face relaxed in the first handful of seconds during which she did not comprehend where she was.

  Then she remembered.

  Her senses came back enough in the next second for her to realize that she was tied to the bed.

  She saw the leering eyes of the man watching her.

  “Don’t go anywhere, my dear.” Javier smiled at her. “I will be back before you know it. Then we shall resume our little, er, game. You will enjoy that, won’t you, my pet?”

  His victim clamped her eyes shut and began screaming, struggling frantically. Helpless.

  “I thought you would.” He snickered.

  He stepped out of the plushly appointed mobile home which had been transported here at great effort and expense; his home-away-from-home for the period of unrest he expected to grip the width and breadth of the Philippines once he gave the final command to his aligned forces to put Operation Thunderstrike into action.

  He locked the door and strode off toward the floodlit landing area of his temporary base in the mountains.

  The four gunships rattled the dawn with their revving.

  The barbed-wire-perimetered base crackled with orderly activity, his well-trained, well-armed soldiers double-timing in formation from their Quonset hut barracks to the copters, where they proceeded to disperse, boarding the gunships to capacity.

  Javier reached the closest of the gunships.

  It was indeed a great source of pride to him that the power he wielded was a deadly, fearsome thing, backed up by men such as those he had brought here with him.

  A far cry from the dogs of disarray commanded by that peasant scum, Locsin, who dared to bestow upon himself a military rank.

  Thinking of the NPA leader and his men, he paused before boarding the helicopter to spit upon the ground the foul taste he got in his mouth when he thought of Locsin and his peasant filth.

  He wondered what could have gone wrong for a commando unit to strike Locsin’s base. He vowed to show scant tolerance if this attack proved to be the result of some private deal of Locsin’s own that had nothing to do with what Javier had planned.

  He looked forward to the day, and he did not think it would be far off, when he would rid himself permanently of “Colonel” Locsin and his entire ill-trained “army.”

  He boarded the helicopter, a fully armed Huey that would have been more than a little familiar to anyone who had served in Vietnam during America’s involvement there.

  This chopper, like the other three, wore a full complement of 40mm cannons and turret-mounted miniguns.

  Javier moved to the cockpit, his men making way for him, where he settled into the vacated copilot’s armored seat. He strapped himself in, reached for a helmet, and nodded curtly to the pilot.

  The gunships lifted as one, maintaining several rotor-widths distance from each other. They lifted like giant bloated insects from the flattened parcel of jungle, banking into a combat formation with Javier’s chopper in the lead.

  As the base faded away behind and below, Javier experienced an increase in his pulse beat and he knew it was because he and his men were flying into action at last.

  For too long there had been waiting, waiting, organizing, and more waiting for the Big Moment; he had tried to submerge the tension with the girl back there in his trailer.

  That had not worked, but this was what he, and his men. had needed all along.

  The smell of blood.

  This would prime them for the big action within the next twenty-four hours.

  Then… the country would be theirs.

  The power would be his.

  The choppers zoomed along low at a little above tree level, the pilots pouring on speed toward the approximate coordinates where the message from Locsin’s camp had estimated the attackers would be heading.

  Who were they? Javier wondered, these daring ones he and his troops were on their way to intercept, to kill. Why had such a unit struck at this moment in his grand scheme of things?

  It did not matter.

  The choppers would be upon that force within a minute or less, and no matter how good they were, they would not stand a chance against four armed gunships and fifty or more of his best men.

  The rumbling thunder of the copter in flight filled Arturo Javier’s ears, matching the pounding of his heart in his chest.

  The smell of blood, yes.

  Let the killing begin.

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  Craine braked the Chor-7 along the treeline of the clearing which was the LZ.

  The second vehicle, filled with Cody, Hawkins, and Murphy, jounced up to stop side-by-side.

  Full daylight washed the scene, the clearing long overgrown with vegetation. The upper fifth of the rising sun was a blazing, eye-searing crescent muffled behind a gauze of mist haloing the jungle hills to the east.

  Caine and Hawkins cut their engines and everyone debarked.

  Cody experienced a surge of relief when he saw Ann Jeffers alight of her own volition from where she had ridden next to her mother.

  Mrs. Jeffers moved beside her daughter, an arm around the teenager, but it was more a show of emotion than to steady her.

  Ann looked glassy-eyed and shaken up, not hysterical or panicky.

  Hawkeye and Richard automatically faded away from the Chor-7s in separate directions, their weapons up in firing position, establishing a security perimeter as best they could, while Cody and Rufe stepped forward to meet the Jefferses. Murphy kept his back to the scene and his own rifle pointed outward, ready for trouble from any direction.

  The only sounds around them for the moment were the unending screechings of jungle wildlife in the trees and on the ground.

  Cody read the question in Cal Jeffers’ eyes.

  “I radioed in our chopper,” he told them. “It’ll be along any minute.”

  “Locsin’s men will be after us—” Jeffers began.

  “On foot, maybe,” Murphy grunted, overhearing.

  “They could loose mortars on us from back there if they are after us,” Cody acknowledged, seeing no reason to soft-peddle the situation to Jeffers, who had to be a realist after all his years with the Company. “When that chopper of ours touches down, everyone run straight for it no matter what.”

  As if on cue, whompa!-whompa!-whompa! sounds discerned themselves, approaching.

  The tell-tale throaty engine racket of choppers.

  Louise Jeffers’ eyes lifted skyward along with everyone else’s, her expression taking on renewed animation, like a believer searching the heavens for a sign from God.

  It’s them… they’re coming! We’re going to make it!”

  Cody felt a grimace tauten his features.

  “There should only be one.”

  He held there another heartbeat, his ears reading those sounds of war comi
ng their way. Like Nam, yeah.

  “If our dudes had backup, we’d’ve heard about it,” Murphy worried. “And they’re coming in from the wrong goddamn direction.”

  Caine and Hawkins emerged then from the density of humid green surrounding them.

  The chopper sounds grew louder, closing in at full throttle, less than two kilometers—maybe seconds—away.

  “Mount up,” he instructed, indicating the Chor-7s. He looked at Caine. “We’ll pull their fire away from you. Try to raise our bird on the radio. Tell him what we’ve got.”

  Everyone scrambled aboard the vehicles.

  Caine wore an expression that said he would much prefer to stay with the rest of the team for the fight roaring their way. He gunned his vehicle to life in unison with Hawkeye doing the same as Cody and Murphy climbed on the other Chor-7.

  Murphy set up a fresh ammo belt on the M-60.

  Cody palmed a brand new clip into his CAR-15.

  Jungle wildlife around the clearing started screeching and yeeping more frantically than before, sensing, heralding, the coming human confrontation.

  Cal Jeffers assisted his wife, then his daughter, into the backseat of the first Chor-7, then joined Caine in front, every eye of the Jeffers family registering concern in the direction of the men in the other vehicle.

  “Let… let us fight with you,” Jeffers implored.

  His wife and daughter nodded agreement.

  Cody shook his head.

  “Thanks for the offer, but no thanks. Our job is to get you out of here, safe and sound, not get you killed. Find cover and sit tight. Our chopper will be here any minute.”

  The incoming choppers were almost upon them now, though still not in sight, but their oncoming racket had blotted out the jungle screechings and everything else.

  “Hit it, Hawkeye,” Cody shouted.

  “I hear that,” Hawkins nodded.

  He popped a clutch busting away from there.

  Caine steered his vehicle in the opposite direction, down the trail for one hundred meters, then he yanked the Chor-7 sharply into the first break in the wall of jungle he came to along the trail.

  The Chor-7 and its passengers disappeared into the verdant wall.

  The rotoring chopper noise sounded almost on top of them now.

  “There they are!” Cody snarled.

  Hawkins’ and Murphy’s eyes followed his to four Huey gunships sailing into view, coming in upon the LZ clearing so low that a knoll of trees extending into the clearing several thousand meters across the stretch had shielded them from sight until this very instant.

  “Locsin called them in,” Hawkeye grunted. “That’s the only way they could have gotten here that fast.”

  “Who the hell are they?” Rufe bellowed above the noise.

  The Chor-7 engine raced, bumping them back along the trail from which they had come moments earlier.

  The gunships slowed down across the clearing, obviously knowing what they were looking for. They fanned out in an even line and started together across the clearing, coming across in a line from the opposite side.

  “No government markings,” Cody noted from their position of concealment.

  “Man, those turkeys don’t need markings,” Hawkeye groused, watching Murphy rotate the M-60 so it pointed in the direction of the choppers. “These guys are gonna be trouble no matter who they are!”

  He sped the Chor-7 down a rocky incline of the trail, where it angled away from the clearing on its way back toward the NPA camp.

  “We go much farther this way and we’re gonna end up back in Colonel Locsin’s lap,” Murphy noted with no show of enthusiasm.

  The Hueys slowed their speed, scouring the clearing like low-flying insects looking for something to munch. The Chor-7 zipped behind a thin wall of smaller trees and drooping vines and jungle growth separating the trail from the clearing.

  Cody could see the choppers across the clearing, through the trees. He saw them drawing closer, closer; then the line of gunships picked up speed, roaring in on them.

  “They’ve spotted us.”

  “And this,” Murphy growled, “is where it gets real hairy!”

  The pilot’s voice crackled in Javier’s helmet headset at the exact moment he himself spotted the racing Chor-7 across the clearing, behind that natural drapery of vines and fronds just inside the treeline.

  “Over there!” The pilot pointed.

  Javier nodded. He spoke into his direct tac net hookup.

  “Birds one and two, land. Engage and capture… if possible. Bird three, remain up here with us. We will cover. They’ll have air pickup coming in for them. We take them on.”

  His headset rattled back with affirmatives from the pilots of the designated gunships, which broke from the formation to begin lowering, each of the copters carrying at least a dozen top-notch paramilitaries.

  Javier’s pulse raced, the tasted scent of blood becoming the scent of the kill. As his and the other gunship zoomed in, he saw more clearly the Chor-7 chugging along, trying to put distance between itself and the clearing that had to have been their pickup point.

  He saw three men in that vehicle, through the Huey’s Plexiglas, but even from this distance, as the gunship maintained its treetop-level approach, he knew that these were the men, or at least some of them, who had assaulted the communists.

  Javier saw that the men in that Jeep down below were heavyset, heavily armed combatants in camou who did not flinch at the sight of oncoming gunships.

  He saw no sign of any other vehicles, the treetop fronds a billowing sea of harsh green stretching below to infinity in every direction.

  Javier saw the big black man at the M-60 machine gun in the rear of that vehicle swing around toward the two copters and open fire when they were coming right down on the Chor-7.

  Another man braced himself in the front passenger seat, firing away nonstop with a CAR-15.

  The Chor-7’s driver upshifted, coaxing more power out of the fast-moving vehicle.

  Javier could not hear that gunfire from the vehicle below through the sounds of his copter’s racket, but a projectile speared a hole, spiderwebbing cracks inches from his head.

  “Fire!” he yelled into his headset microphone. “Destroy them!”

  To his either side, the two Hueys began their paradoxically overweight yet graceful descent, the side hatches yanking open, rifle-toting men inside priming themselves to hit the ground and close in to block off the roaring Chor-7.

  We must kill them! Javier’s mind screamed, wholly inflamed.

  The pilot of Javier’s gunship, of the one zooming in three rotor lengths to his right, opened up each with their miniguns and the 40mm cannons blamming, twin lines of evenly spaced explosions pulverizing the jungle.

  For a moment it looked like the driver of that Chor-7 would outmaneuver the impacting cannon fire, but Javier had chosen to fly with the best of his pilots.

  The man next to him justified that faith, angling Javier’s gunship just so, then triggered another boom from the 40mm that only barely missed the racing Chor-7 but hit close enough for a geysering eruption of flame, smoke, and earth that caught the back end of the vehicle, the force of the blast lifting it and the men aboard into a nose-crunched forward somersault.

  Twin gunships buzzed by over that sight and for a moment it was gone beneath Javier’s line of vision. The last thing he saw as the Huey sped by was the Chor-7 flipping the three men aboard it airborne, catapulted into three different directions.

  Hawkins hit the ground to come out of the roll in a loose-limbed somersault he had first perfected as a smart-ass kid busting broncs for rodeo prize money in the Panhandle, before he was drafted, before Nam.

  He righted himself, unleathering the .45 automatic holstered at his side, his CAR-15 lost somewhere in what remained of the Chor-7.

  The impacting cannon fire had heaved the vehicle end over end into a tree.

  The Chor-7 presently rested at a crazed, crashed angle against the tre
e, smoke steaming from a punctured radiator, one wheel stuck up in the air, looping unevenly, the rear axle busted apart at the middle.

  Hawkins hit a combat crouch close to the ground, unsheathing his combat knife with his other hand. He viewed the sloping stretch of trail around him.

  The two Hueys had zapped by overhead. He allowed himself to momentarily forget about those. He focused his attention around to where the third of these unmarked choppers rested its landing skids upon the clearing ground no more than twenty yards from the treeline where Hawkins now stood.

  Before that chopper completely settled, the side doors unleashed a stream of camou fatigue-clad paramilitaries armed with what looked to Hawkins like standard Kalishnakov AK-47s.

  The force spread out in a staggered combat line with plenty of space between each man, advancing at a jog toward the treeline.

  The second chopper hovering slightly back in a defensive posture now commenced settling down.

  Hawkins saw men crowding at its hatchdoor as if eager to leap out. He glanced this way and that, and spotted Murphy and Cody coming toward him from a break several meters up and across the road.

  Cody had managed to hold onto his CAR-15, which he gripped in both fists. Murphy moved toward the remains of the Chor-7. They both looked ruffled, disheveled from the crash, but Hawkins knew these guys well enough that he was sure they would appear unless an errant piece of shrapnel from that impacting blast that sent them spinning had found a mark.

  Hawkins had ridden with the blast that had tossed his vehicle, as he now saw his buddies must have done. He wiped at what he thought was sweat near his right temple. His hand came away red with droplets of his own blood. He snarled an oath and gently probed the area with his fingertips, too hyped up with the adrenaline rush of the moment to feel any pain, but he did feel a paper-cut-thin slice beneath his right eye. He wiped away the remaining few droplets of blood with the back of his gunhand.

  Cody came up to him, motioning toward the sturdy trunks of towering teak trees that lined this piece of the trail.

  “We make a stand here.”

  Murphy leaned up from the rear of the Chor-7, where the M-60 had been mounted and was now blocked from sight by the vehicle’s overturned chassis, emerging with the big M-60 cradled in his massive, muscle-knotted arms, a long strip of ammo belt wrapped around his torso, brass shiny in the probing rays of sunlight.