Philippine Hardpunch (10 page)

“It’s not all right.”

She spoke in a dull monotone he had to lean forward to hear.

“Ann—”

“I’ve ruined everything. I’ve destroyed everything. I am total shit.”

Mrs. Jeffers, on Ann’s other side, could not hear those words because of the noise, but she caught her eye, and she read the
look Cody sent her behind Ann’s back. She put an arm around her daughter. She spoke in Ann’s other ear. Cody could not hear
what she said.

Ann closed her eyes again and continued sitting there with no emotion whatsoever on her face and with the body language of
a rubber band stretched too taut, about to snap.

Cody saw nothing he could do to help. He cared, but he was a soldier, not a therapist, and he knew absolutely nothing about
nineteen-year-old children, or what Ann Jeffers had gone through back there at Colonel Locsin’s NPA base in the jungle.

The ocean beneath sparkled as if some mythical giant had spread diamonds across opaque blue glass, the stretches of sea interspersed
with green-and-black splotches of islands.

Cody rested his head back against the hull and decided maybe the kid had the right idea. He closed his eyes, but soon he was
dreaming.

Dreaming of hammering machine guns and the stench of napalm and jungles and humanity eaten by apocalyptic fires.

He awoke with a lurch and a startled gasp that filled his own ears.

The chopper was settling down.

He blinked away a moment’s disorientation, knowing he had been dreaming yet feeling vulnerable somehow. He submerged that,
grabbed the wall strap and tugged himself to his feet.

Rufe settled the warbird in a Top Secret square of tarmac in an obscure corner of the expansive base.

This was not the first such highly sensitive operation to be launched from Clark Air Force Base.

The rotor sounds whooshed down to nothing.

White-coated paramedics rushed across the sun-splashed tarmac toward the chopper pushing gurneys and life-saving equipment.

Behind them came General Simmons, the one man on Clark who knew the whole story.

Cody debarked onto the tarmac first.

Brassy sunlight pressed down from the clear white sky between black, rain-heavy clouds.

It is said there are two seasons in the Philippines: the wet and the very wet.

Every inch of Cody’s clothing was plastered to his body by grime and sweat.

Simmons looked rumpled, as if he’d had a bad night of it. He had appeared crisp and efficient when Cody’s team had set off
from here several hours ago. Now the guy, a trim man in his midfifties with iron-gray hair and demeanor, looked as if he’d
grown a whole new set of wrinkles during the long wait for this moment.

Cody and the general helped Mrs. Jeffers down from the chopper, then Ann. Both of the ladies waved off the gurneys. Hawkins
and Caine stepped down from the other side of the chopper, where Murphy joined them after shutting down the engines and unstrapping
himself from the pilot’s seat.

Simmons knew the names of these men but nothing else about them. Everyone involved in this functioned strictly on a Need to
Know, including this Two Star.

Cal Jeffers came out next. Simmons extended a hand to him.

“Welcome home, Mr. Jeffers. Thank God you and your family are back with us.”

“Thank Cody, you mean. And thank you, General… and the men you lost for us.”

“Lost?” Simmons turned to Cody.

“One of my men flew us back,” Cody reported. “Both of the crews bought it.”

The paramedics were leading away Mrs. Jeffers and Ann toward the closest building fronting this landing pad.

Louise Jeffers looked back at her husband with a look that said she did not want them to be apart again, ever.

Cody read the look that way, at any rate, and something told him that this ordeal would probably serve to strengthen things
between this married man and woman and not destroy them as it had the potential of doing.

Ann Jeffers was another matter.

Cal Jeffers lifted his hand in a reassuring way and mother and daughter continued on with the paramedics hurrying them along.

Ann did not look back, not at her father nor at Cody nor at anyone else. She walked like a zombie.

“You go join your family, Mr. Jeffers,” General Simmons urged. “You’ll want to get cooled down from what you’ve been through.
We’ll have a debriefing in—” He deferred to Cody, who had been given charge of this operation by White House order.

“Not
de
briefing,” Cody said.” Briefing. One hour, please, Mr. Jeffers.”

Jeffers nodded and started to speak.

Simmons echoed, “One hour? These people have been through hell, Cody—”

“It’s not over, General. These folks are back and I’m glad for that, but it’s not over. There’s more to this than this family
held hostage, and there is no time to lose.”

“What have you found out?”

Jeffers broke in.

“I know what he’s talking about, General. I haven’t been able to put it all together yet, myself, but… it could add up to
something, sure. I’ll be ready in an hour, Cody. Or less.”

“Please join your family for that checkup, then,” the general suggested. “They need you at a time like this, Mr. Jeffers.
One hour, then.”

Jeffers turned to Cody with the look of an out-of-shape fighter returning from retirement for one last hurrah. He’d done okay,
but the effort showed.

“Hey, mister, thanks again, from the bottom, okay?”

“Okay.” Cody nodded. “And have someone qualified take a look at your daughter, Cal. She looks in bad shape.”

“I will.” Jeffers shot a tired grin at Simmons.”You’ve got one hell of a man here, General.”

He left them, pausing to speak with Hawkins, Caine, and Murphy where those worn-out guys lounged around the opposite side
of the chopper.

Simmons regarded Cody.

“My thanks too, soldier. And pass that on to your men. Looks like you guys could use some freshening up, too. You’re gamier
than a goat in a shithole, son.”

“I’ll see to it, sir.”

Cody crossed over to join his men as Jeffers walked away, across the baking tarmac toward the doorway through which the paramedics
had rushed his wife and daughter moments earlier.

“Shower up,” Cody told his men. “Rearm. Briefing in one hour.”

“One hour!” Hawkins groused. “What asshole came up with this double-time shit?”

“You’re looking at him. You can file a written protest with Pete Lund when we get home.”

“He’ll have to learn how to write, first.” Caine chuckled.

“It’s that outfit that took us on after we busted those folks away from the commies,” Murphy grunted. “That’s what you’ve
got in your craw,” he said to Cody.

“That’s it.” Cody nodded. “And Jeffers says he’s got more. There could be more to this than anyone thinks.”

Caine thought about that. “And the Jefferses got caught in the middle?”

“Something like that.”

Hawkins grunted, “If we’re gonna try tracking down anybody, we’d better not try it smelling this bad.”

“Not terribly eloquent, but profound in essence,” Caine nodded dryly. “Let’s find those showers.”

The briefing room was air-conditioned cool and sunlight bright, thanks to one wall of windows. The bare walls went with the
spartan furnishings: gray metal conference table, gray metal armchairs.

Cody, as head man of this operation, sat at one end of the long table. General Simmons and Cal Jeffers sat to his right, the
men of his team to his left. Everyone looked showered down and scrubbed up, even the general, Simmons.

Jeffers wore a fresh-looking leisure suit which had been provided him, Cody and his crew wore fresh camou fatigues and fully
reloaded .45s on their hips.

Mrs. Jeffers and Ann were being cared for at the infirmary.

M-16 toting sentries stood guard in the hallway outside the briefing room.

A pitcher of ice water and glasses remained untouched, the full attention of Cody and his men, and Simmons, centered on Jeffers,
who was winding up his first run-through of his family’s ordeal.

“That’s about it, then, gentlemen.” Jeffers raised his water glass to his lips for the first time and polished off half of
it in a couple of gulps. “Guess old habits die hard. I kept my ears and eyes open. It helped being kept in that headquarters
hut.”

“They must have been planning to kill you,” Simmons said, “and your family, or you wouldn’t have overheard anything. They
kept you alive to take those pictures they needed to get the payoff. They never considered you’d be rescued.”

“Except for those visits from Javier’s people, and that one other time, they did keep the lid on pretty tight.” Jeffers dabbed
at his forehead, shiny despite the crisp cool of the air conditioning. “Man, I’ll have nightmares about this for the rest
of my life.”

“What about your daughter?” asked Cody.

Jeffers drew back, in his eyes, and only Cody saw it.

“Uh, what about her?”

Hawkeye Hawkins put in, “Your daughter looked in pretty bad shape, Mr. Jeffers.”

“Real bad.” Murphy nodded.

Simmons snapped angrily, “Of course the kid looks bad! Consider what the child’s been through.”

Jeffers bristled. “If you’re implying what I think your are—”

“You kept a hell of a cool head when the chips were down, Mr. J.,” Cody said evenly, “and you came through for us back at
the LZ. We just want to make sure we’re working with the whole picture. None of this is very pleasant.”

Jeffers accepted that, relaxing back into his chair. He looked embarrassed.

“Very well.” General Simmons moved right along. “I say we concentrate on Javier. You think those were goons, Mr. Jeffers?”

Cody knew Simmons was not slipping into dated slang.

Goons
was in common usage in the hinterlands and remote islands that were often virtually controlled and governed by province warlords.
The goons were the paramilitary militias that enforced the warlords’ will, even upon cowed local government leaders.

These warlords had been closely aligned with the Marcos government, but political changes in Manila had little, if any, immediate
effect on the remote provinces where most of these warlords held power.

Arturo Javier—a millionaire who counted among his holdings a sugar mill, a warehouse, and a cement plant in Butuan Province
on Mindanao—was such a warlord.

Cody decided to let slide his hunch that he was not getting the whole story about Ann Jeffers’ part in the kidnap drama of
the past three weeks.

“All I know is that men, uniformed exactly like the ones who tried to stop us, visited Colonel Locsin on two occasions while
we were there. The conversations I overheard were vague, but I got the impression that it was a sort of final confirmation
of plans between their forces. I didn’t know at the time, of course, that they were aligned with Javier. Who would think such
a thing.”

“Guys like this warlord, Javier, are everything the commie insurgents are fighting against,” Rufe Murphy pointed out.

“Javier is the only way it breaks down,” Cody concluded. “The only ones with firepower like four Hueys are this warlord and
the government, and we know the government wasn’t involved. Right, General?”

“Affirmative,” Simmons assured them.

“Then that force we met, those responsible for the deaths of that chopper crew, has to belong to Arturo Javier.”

“Sworn enemies of the New People’s Army,” Caine reflected. “It doesn’t add up.”

“It adds up,” Cody said. “We just don’t know how, yet. But we will.”

“So this Javier punk and the commies are sworn enemies,” Hawkins said. “But Javier comes to the rescue when we come for the
Jefferses.”

Simmons eyed Cody.

“Are you sure they were
with
Locsin’s force?”

“I’m sure.” Cody nodded. “They lost three choppers full of men trying to keep us from getting out of there. That tells me
something big is in the wind.”

“The odds would have to be high.” Caine nodded. “A warlord and the communists holding hands and sacrificing all those lives
to keep the lid on it.”

“What is it they’re so uptight about us finding out?” Cody asked. “That’s what we’ve got to find out.”

“There was a man who came with those goons of Javier’s the second time, but not the first time. In fact, I think the purpose
of the second visit was to introduce the man.”

“Did you catch this man’s name?” Cody asked.

“I did, but I had already recognized the voice,” Jeffers said with a grin. “His name is Vincente Valera. I heard him speak
one time at a businessmen’s convention. A very deep voice for a Filipino, resonant, and with a slight stutter only at times,
on the ‘t’s. An unusual voice, that’s why I remembered it.”

“Ranking bigshot in the Opposition Party,” Simmons considered aloud. “If he’s tied into it, we are talking very strange bedfellows.”

“What could they have been cooking together?” Caine asked.

“At this point, it doesn’t matter,” said Cody. “Whatever it is, it’s big. Mass assassinations; complete takeover, a try for
all the marbles.” He looked to Simmons. “Is that possible?”

“With the new government presently so unstable,” Simmons said, “anything is possible.”

“What we concentrate on now is finding a handle,” Cody told them.

Hawkins chuckled. “Then grab it and pull like hell, eh, Sarge?”

“You’ve got it.” Cody nodded. “What’s the story on this Valera, General? Is he a handle?”

“He just could be,” said Simmons. “He owns controlling interest in a club in Manila. The government’s had it under surveillance
but not much more.”

“Are we sure about that?”

“They haven’t got anything on him they can use or I’d have heard about his place being slammed shut.”

“Get me a complete BG on Valera,” Cody instructed the general. “We’ll—”

He was interrupted by a commotion from outside the closed doors.

The double doors flew inward a moment later and Louise Jeffers burst into the room, wearing a more terrified expression than
she had during those final moments on the ground two hours earlier at that hot LZ near Colonel Locsin’s camp.