Countdown: H Hour (34 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Falstaff:

To die is to be a counterfeit, for he is but the

counterfeit of a man who hath not the life of a man;

but to counterfeit dying when a man thereby liveth,

is to be no counterfeit, but the true and perfect image

of life indeed. The better part of valor is discretion,

in the which better part I have sav’d my life.

—William Shakespeare,
Henry the Fourth

Caban Island, Pilas Group, Basilan Province,

Republic of the Philippines

Janail did a mental inventory of his assets and liabilities.
My company on the beach doesn’t seem to much exist anymore. My mortars are gone. My antiaircraft platoon is gone. I haven’t heard from the antitank platoon in a while. Camana is dead and Ampuan says that to show yourself up by the cliffs is to die. My prisoner is gone, and I’m not going to get him back. So my nuclear weapons and my sultanate are gone, too.

I wish I knew who it was who attacked me. Ampuan thinks it’s the Kanos. That certainly matches the firepower they’ve used. And the vindictiveness with which they’ve used it, when they got hurt. Americans; they’ll cross an icy river, in winter, in the middle of the night, to kill you in your sleep. On their
Christmas.
I’m
so
fucked.

“What can I save?” he asked himself. “Ampuan says it’s not too late to pull out, that he and the two companies can run faster than the enemy can follow. And I’ve got this company with me, untouched.

“Suppose we pull north? I have defenses there. Also that’s where the Christian slave women ran with their brats. Kanos or Filipinos, makes no difference where their, or anyone’s, women and children are concerned. Yeah . . . yeah . . . that’s the ticket. We can use the women and children as shields and trade them for safe passage out of here to somewhere else. Mindanao, I think. And maybe, if I can save enough, I can challenge the Liberation Front for leadership.

“Maybe all isn’t lost quite yet.”

Freshly rearmed and refueled, aloft and searching over the northern end of the island, Jake saw a large knot of
some
group or other clustered by the shore. He pulled his stick to the right, veering in that direction, to fly almost directly at them.

Those aren’t Harrikat
, he thought, looking left through his NVGs.
They’re little guys, but they’re not that little. And those aren’t guys. And I don’t see anything that resembles a rifle among them.

And they’re waving
?
Yeah. Not Harrikat. No way.

He called the bridge of the
Bland
, saying, “I’ve got something over a hundred people, all sort of hiding on the northern end of the island. Women. Kids, too, if I mark them right. They’re looking for rescue, near as I can tell.”

Sent the
Bland
back, “Roger, wait, out.”

MV
Richard Bland
, just east of Caban Island

Welch and Pearson exchanged glances. The latter, shrugging, said, “Well, food’s not even as much of an issue as it was with the Marehan and the humanitarians. We can dump them right back on Luzon. Like tomorrow.”

“I don’t have anyone to send for security,” Welch objected.

“Don’t have to,” Pearson insisted. “We’ve got the one LCM, with two .50 calibers on it. Kirkpatrick’s got two more men besides. I can shit another four, maybe. They can get them loaded and secure themselves while they’re doing it.”

Kiertzner piped in with his very posh accent, “All the same with you gentlemen, I’d like to go on that.”

“See?” said Pearson. “Even the acting sergeant major thinks it’s a good idea.”

Kiertzner didn’t add anything to that. He did think,
That’s not precisely what I said. What I said was I’d like to go along. It might be a very bad idea indeed. On the other hand, I
really
don’t like being stuck aboard ship when there’s action going on.

“And after the load of wounded they’re putting on Kirkpatrick’s boat, now, we’ll have nothing we have to take out,” Pearson continued. “Not until the island’s cleared, anyway. And Stocker’s going to have a sufficient area of the beach cleared for any more wounded we might take to get dusted off in just a bit.”

Welch puffed his cheeks, doubtfully, and asked, “You’re saying, ‘Do it’?”

“Why not? And besides, we might need the good offices of the Philippine government here shortly, like when you go for Benson and his crew. This won’t hurt that a bit.

“I can have the LCM bring the wounded they’ve got now back here. We unload them. Load up a few more men, under Kiertzner. Kirkpatrick goes in and pulls the civilians out. What could go wrong?”

While Welch was contemplating all the things that could go wrong, Lox, down in the RPV control station, piped in over the intercom. “Bridge, Lox. Quick picture: It looks like the Harrikat around A Company are pulling back. Might be for another push, or maybe a rush. Might be they’re leaving. I think it’s the latter, because that couple of platoons—or maybe it’s a really small company—in the center are also starting to move back to the north.

“There are still stragglers all over the place, of course.”

“Roger,” Welch sent back. Then he had a thought. “Peter, if this group had a bunch of captured women, what language would those women speak?”

“Mostly Tagalog,” the latter replied. “Some might speak Cebuano, too, but they’ll still probably understand Tagalog. A lot of them—probably most—will speak at least some English, for that matter.”

“Right,” sent Welch. “Turn the intel gathering over to the pilot. Come up on deck; I have another mission for you.”

“Roger. Be right there. Out.”

“So you’re going to let us do it?” Pearson asked.

Welch gave him a dirty look. “You knew I would two minutes after you first broached the subject.”

“Okay, so why are you agreeing?” the captain asked.

“Because of what you said about the Philippine government and because right now those women and kids can be evacuated before the Harrikat can hide behind them or use them for bargaining chips. I really don’t want to get into an argument with our employer about killing the Harrikat if it means killing a bunch of women and kids. See, she won’t care.”

“They might not be the only group, you know,” Pearson said.

“True,” Welch agreed. “But it’s better to get twenty or thirty killed exterminating the Harrikat than five times that many.”

Caban Island, Pilas Group, Basilan Province,

Republic of the Philippines

Feeney and Hallinan couldn’t find Semmerlin. They guessed that he’d drifted down into a patch of low ground where it was very difficult to see the infrared chemlights. That both men had rifle mounted night vision devices, rather than goggles, made it harder still.

Feeney sent over the radio, “Semmerlin, where the fuck are you?”

“I haven’t a fucking clue,” came the answer. “And speak up.”

“I swear,” said Hallinan, with frustration, “or at least I could have sworn, that he was right around here.”

“Yeah, I saw the lights, too,” Feeney agreed, lifting his rifle to his shoulder, placing his eye against the rubber eyepiece of his scope, and sweeping left to right. “Damned scopes are good for a lot of things. This isn’t one of them.”

“Hey, Feeney; listen.”

“Listen to what?”

“The firefight back by the cliffs.”

Feeney lowered his rifle and listened for only a moment before asking, “What firefight?”

“Right. It’s stopped. What’s that mean?”

“Most likely that either the Harrikat won, or we did and they’re pulling . . . oh, shit.”

Both men instantly dropped to the ground, side by side, rifles to shoulders, and eyes to scopes, sweeping the ground in the direction from which they’d come. Hallinan was the first one to spot the retreating Moros. He elbowed Feeney lightly, to warn him, then whispered, “They’re coming this way.”

“Hold your fire,” Feeney counseled. “There’s too many of them.”

“No shit?”

They heard someone call out a command. They didn’t understand the language but the tone was unmistakable. The Moros began to congregate closer to where the Americans lay.

The two companies had started with about one hundred and thirty men and two datus. They had left maybe eighty and a single datu, Ampuan. The rest were dead or dying back up the slope. For that matter, not all the eighty were entirely hale. A good dozen, as far as Ampuan could tell, were being carried by the others. Like good Moros, those wounded didn’t cry out, except for one trying to hold his guts in where something—maybe a bullet, maybe a mine—had basically disemboweled him. And even he had blood running down his face where he’d chewed his own lips to pulp trying to stifle the cries of pain.

We should put him out of his misery
, Ampuan thought.
I saw what was left of the hut where the doctor had been. He’ll get no medical care from us and that means it’s just a lingering miserable death for him.

I suppose we could leave him for the Kanos or the Filipinos, but they’ll probably just burn him alive for their amusement. The times have sure changed from the old days.

Finally deciding, Ampuan called out softly, “Bring the wounded to me.” The word passed and the bearers began carrying their charges toward Ampuan.

The first to arrive was a young boy, no more than fifteen years old, If Ampuan remembered correctly. The boy’s eyes and face were mostly gone; the datu could tell that much by touch.

He gripped the boy’s shoulder and asked, “Do you believe in Allah?”

“Yes, Datu,” the boy said softy.

The datu drew his kalis, the local term for a kris. It was wavy and sharp as a nagging woman’s tongue. “Go to Him, then, and know that the blessings of Paradise will be yours for your courage and faithfulness.”

Ampuan drew the kalis across the boy’s throat, opening it so that blood gushed out in a fountain. The spray stopped after a few moments. The boy went limp and unconscious instantly.

The next was walking, but held up by a man holding his left arm across the shoulders. “No need, Datu,” said that one. “I will die, but not yet. And I can still fight. Leave me here to cover your withdrawal.”

Ampuan agreed. “Find him a position from which he may still fight,” he ordered the bearer.

The bearer began half-carrying that wounded man to a tree he could just make out among the shadows.

Feeney was possibly a lunatic but he was not a fool. He waited until the last possible moment to fire, just on the off chance that the Moros might move on or even stop short of his position. Still, with the one Moro bearing another almost stepping upon him, he had no choice. It was fire now or die damned soon.

He raised his rifle and shot twice, at a range of no more than a dozen feet. The first bullet passed through the wounded Moro, approximately center of mass, stopping the man’s heart in mid-beat. The second blew the brains out of the back of the head of the one carrying him. They fell in a tangle of limbs.

Hallinan was expecting it, ever since he saw the one Moro bearing the other in his and Feeney’s direction. He opened fire immediately after Feeney, knocking down one, then another, who had a radio on his back. He missed the third, cursing. After that there were no more targets visible as the Harrikat went to ground. Two seconds after that, both Feeney and Hallinan were quite thoroughly pinned, as dozens of Moro rifles and machine guns beat the air and ground around them, aiming for the muzzle flashes.

His RTO wouldn’t answer. He couldn’t call for help, even if Janail had had any to send. His men were shooting but he doubted they were hitting anything of importance except, given the darkness, maybe each other.

Ampuan really didn’t know why the enemy had missed him. He suspected divine intervention. Allah’s finger upon him or not, though, his heart beat a frantic tattoo. He still had his kalis in hand, which was perhaps something, but not much. Where his rifle was he had not a clue.

I’ll find it later, if I can . . . that, or there should be someone else’s lying around.
His hand squeezed the ornate—cheap and tacky, but ornate—hilt of his kalis.
No use to that,
Ampuan thought.
But what do I have that might work
?

Transferring the blade to his left hand, his right searched along his ammunition belt for the grenades he kept there. These were homemade things, with friction pull igniters. Really, they weren’t a lot more sophisticated than the grenades of the early part of the Great War, being merely a bamboo tube, the inside lined with nails, then filled with explosive and the friction igniter, the latter being fitted to a nonelectric blasting cap.

Ampuan’s hand found one such and pulled it from his belt. He let go the kalis, then took in his fingers the little drilled out stone to which the pull cord for the igniter was attached.

Quality control for hand grenade manufacture, even in the high tech west, was a little questionable. In the local arms factory?
Forget that shit
. As soon as he pulled the cord, Ampuan threw his grenade in the direction of the muzzle flashes. Immediately, that questing right hand sought another grenade.

Feeney saw the first grenade, landing close by, by the sparking of the fuse. His firing hand left the pistol grip of his rifle, grabbed the thing automatically, and tossed it a few meters away. The blast was bad enough, at that distance, but most of the shrapnel went up and away. Two pieces found his right calf and thigh, however, tearing into the flesh below the skin and the cloth of his battle dress.

Son of a bitch
!

He saw another rolling spark and, lifting his torso up, reached for it. Yes, he possibly could have ducked away but Hallinan probably did
not
see it. Whatever Feeney’s flaws, and they were many, saving himself at the cost of a brother was not among them.

The grenade went off in his hand, peeling his arm back to the elbow and driving dozens of metal fragments deep into his neck. His body armor, itself studded with nails, could not help him there.

Hallinan, lying next to Feeney, felt blinding agony as something tore into his neck and, at the same time, flash and blast burned off most of the flesh on the right side of his face, totally ruining that eye. Dropping his rifle, both hands went to clutch at his own throat, where blood from a severed artery poured into his mouth and down his lungs.