PULAU MATI (23 page)

Dayah, unarmed and carrying a bag over her shoulder
walked off the trail and into the clearing.  She shrieked and took off at a run back up the trail.  Before Gray could react, the first two men with rifles that had cleared the dock raised them and fired at the fleeing woman.  Gray almost moaned aloud.  He considered detonating the Claymore and then opening fire but if Dayah was hit, the damage was already done.  It occurred to him that Melanie had not opened fire.  Good judgment or she had waited for him and Anna to start firing first.  Either way, good girl.

The leader motioned and seven men took off at a jog toward the trail. 
If Dayah was not hit, they would never catch her at that pace.  The men disappeared up the trail. There were no immediate shots fired and none of the men returned so he had hope Dayah was not hit.

Gray estimated
two to three minutes for the men to cover the 400 yards to the ambush.  He regretted giving Melanie a choice of the hut or the jungle.  If the two men discovered her they might call back the other seven or she might shoot them if discovered and the shots would bring the other seven back.  The leader tilted his head toward the hut and started walking in that direction.  The man went to the shade of the porch and sat on its edge and the other man joined him.  Gray relaxed a bit and gave the yacht a quick scan with the binoculars.  One man wearing a robe that looked gold colored in the slanted sunlight stood on the flying bridge scanning the island with binoculars.  That made at least two men remaining on the yacht.

The two men
sitting on the edge of the porch were almost on a line between Gray and Anna’s position and Melanie which meant he and Anna would have to hold fire when the mines went off.  The men would certainly move when the mines did go off and the firing started on the trail.  Gray hand signaled Anna of the danger to Melanie and she nodded that she understood.  He signaled her to shoot whoever was on her side.  She acknowledged that with a single bob of the head.

Gray was thinking that Melanie was watching the men through the thatched material of the wall and waiting with a sweaty finger on the trigger.  He hoped she remembered where he and Anna
were hiding.  He was easing below the embankment for better cover when the island shook.

The men
jumped off the porch and stepped far enough away from the hut to see the cloud of smoke and debris rising above the jungle and into the blue sky.  Melanie rose above the wall of the hut and brought her rifle to bear on the men as Gray and Anna raised their rifles.  The leader was bringing a radio to his mouth.  A rapid staccato of shots followed and both men crumpled to the ground.  Gray glanced back at the yacht, hoping the men were in a blind spot for anyone aboard it.  The pops of rifle shots were coming from the trail.  They were too few and evenly paced to be a firefight.  Melanie’s head was still above the wall of the hut.  Gray moved out of the foliage far enough to give her a thumbs up and motion her to duck down.  She returned the thumbs up and her head disappeared.

To Anna he said, “Stay here with the clacker.  Use it if you need it
but lay flat behind this ridge, we are close to one side of the mine’s coverage.  I’m going up the trail to see if there is any sign that Dayah was wounded.”  He worked through the foliage to the pool and then across the clearing to the south side of the hut.  He told Melanie that Anna was still along the embankment and he was going to go up the trail as soon as he checked on the two men off the corner of the porch.  He also told her she had used good judgment by holding fire when the men had shot at Dayah.  When he had gone behind the hut and to the other side, an angry voice was coming over a radio on the body of one of the men.  He verified that the palms and jungle at the shore blocked the view from the yacht and he scurried out and removed the radio from the leader.  He held the talk button down like someone was trying to send a message.  After verifying the radio was on a different frequency than his, he turned it off and turned on his own radio.

“Shinobu, how goes it?”  There was no response. 
He moved into the jungle behind the hut and worked over toward the trail.  At a spot in cover where he could see a hundred yards up the trail, he waited.  Shinobu may have forgotten to turn on his radio or he had intentionally left it off so it did not give him away if some of the Abu Sayyaf men were still alive.  The firing up the trail had stopped minutes ago.  He waited with the radio on but ready to turn it off if he saw or heard someone coming down the trail.

The radio beeped.  “How many came up trail?”
Shinobu asked, speaking in a whisper.”

“Seven
.  Is Dayah hurt? Is anyone hurt?” Gray asked quietly but as distinctly as possible.

“
No one is hurt.  We have six bodies.  I am shutting off the radio.”

Gray
also turned off his radio and choked back a sob of relief that the young Malay was okay.  He moved into the thickest cover he could find, verified a round in the chamber, clicked off the safety of his rifle and listened and waited.  He was confident Anna would stay put for a long time and believed Melanie would also stay hunkered down.  The lone Abu Sayyaf man was the one who had to move so he was the vulnerable one.  Gray and his companions just had to be patient, wait and listen.

The crunch of a
footstep came from somewhere behind and to his left, between him and somewhere west of the hut, and very close. He nearly gasped from the shiver that shot through him. Was he covered adequately from that direction?  He had not thought about needing cover from that direction.

Another crunch came
, still very close but now closer to the clearing.  The man was probably focused on the clearing and Gray could risk a slow turn.  He pulled enough weight off his right foot to turn it 45 degrees.  He did the same with his left foot and slowly allowed his body to turn amongst the leaves of his cover without as much as a rustle.  Twice more he repeated the process until he had turned 135 degrees.  His breathing was elevated and his heart thumped so hard it seemed anyone within 50 feet could hear it in the quiet of the jungle.  The only sounds besides his breathing were far off, the occasional bird and the whisper of the surf.  Nothing came from the hut or the embankment, or from the edge of the clearing where he had last heard the crunch.  Whoever was out there understood the value of silence and lack of motion.  But the man wanted to reach the motorboat and was forced to move.  By now he had probably spotted the two dead men lying by the hut and deduced there was an enemy somewhere out there waiting.

Gray hoped Dayah, Shinobu and Keegan
maintained their positions.  He believed they would and if they did not they would come through the jungle slowly and with caution so at least there was time to wait out this guy.  He could be patient.

Gray saw a
texture and color that was not quite right for the jungle, a tiny fragment of grey shirt between the leaves, no more than 30 feet away.  But where on the body was that fragment located?  He let his eyes slide up and down and left and right from the spot.  There was movement.  The grey spot disappeared.  He could not fire haphazardly in the general direction because the hut lay on the other side.  He thought of his light complexion and the whites of his eyes, seen easily by the man if he were to turn.

The side of a face and then an ear moved into an opening in the foliage
.  Slowly Gray raised the rifle, careful not to snag a branch or leaf.  Bringing the rifle up shifted enough weight to change the pressure under his left foot.  Something made a tiny pop beneath his shoe.  The face turned quickly but by then Gray’s rifle was up and he pulled the trigger.  The man probably saw the muzzle flash if the message traveled from his eyes to his brain and it registered before he died.  There was enough blood and brain splattered on the foliage to assure Gray the man was dead.  Despite that, he crawled forward enough to see the man clearly.  He was lying face down.  The high velocity bullet had entered somewhere in the face and tumbled or expanded and blown out a chunk of the skull above and behind the left ear.  He turned on the radio and asked, “Shinobu, are you there?”

“I heard a shot
from the clearing and took the chance of turning on the radio.”

“The seventh is accounted for, plus two more that stayed at the clearing.  Come down the trail but when you get close
to the clearing cut through the jungle and meet to the south of the hut.  I don’t want whoever is on the yacht to see us.”

Gray worked back to the side of the hut.  “Melanie, every man who came ashore is dead.  Just stay there and rest.  Do you need anything?”

“I’m good.  Thanks, Gray.”

“You did a good job.  Now we are going to see if we can capture our second ship.”  He went behind the hut and
then to the Claymore.  He deactivated it and signaled for Anna to join him.  The sun had dropped to the top of the saddle.

In a few minutes, Shinobu, Dayah and Keegan came out of the jungle and joined
Anna and Gray.

When they were all close but Melanie,
Gray said, “The moon has been coming up later every night.  And it is very dark until it comes up.  I think tonight we have an hour of only starlight before it comes up.  I’m thinking we set the leader upright in the boat and his second at the helm.  Fake bind my hands and feet and someone hunched out of sight below the helm steer the motorboat out to the yacht.  When we are close I shoot whoever is there to greet us.”

“They will have a search
light on the flying bridge,” Shinobu said.  “I am not sure a dead man at the helm will pass inspection.”

“
There’s a current out there.  What if weh went around east of the yacht with the pirate boat and drifted en as the other boat approaches?” Keegan asked.

“
I cannot imagine that whoever is on board cannot recognize the difference between the engine notes of the two boats.  If they did not turn the searchlight on you and shoot you out of the water with the cannon there would still be the critical timing aspect, knowing where to cut the engine so the current takes the boat to where you want to go.”

Shinobu said, “
I have an idea.”  He went behind the hut and around to the two dead men.  He removed the leader’s pistol belt, shirt and kufi and donned all of them and came back around to the others.

“I only saw him wearing sunglasses,” Anna said.  “But I think his cheeks were fuller and his neck heavier.  And I’m sorry to say Shinobu, the blotches on your face will show up under a strong light.”

“Splash blood on face,” Dayah said.  “Will cover blotches and cheeks.”

“Weh n
eed something ter distract them.  Tie up Dayah with Gray.”

Anna said, “
Dayah could certainly distract them but she is not as good with a gun as me.  Tie me up with Gray.”

Shinobu and Dayah went back around to the dead men and she
carefully patted blood from one of them onto the old man’s face.  She insisted he remove his white shirt because it showed around the collar of the dark grey shirt and through the bullet holes.  When they returned, Gray had to admit it was a passable resemblance and it only had to hold up until they were within 25 feet and in very unnatural lighting.  They agreed in principle to the plan but still had to work out the details.  Gray tried to talk Anna out of going but he gave in easily because she was handling a rifle well and the extra firepower was welcome.

Shinobu was familiarizing himself with the Glock long slide carried by the man he was replacing.  They
created a realistic looking binding by cutting several strands of rope into lengths just long enough to go around the legs once and then holding them there with a single twist of wire which could be easily pulled loose.  They practiced covering their rifles with their bodies and then quickly bringing them to bear.  As the sun was setting, the leader’s radio came to life.  Dayah listened to the voice and said she understood some of it.  The man was saying Allah allow brave martyrs buried without washing and in clothes they wearing.

They dragged the body of the man
who died with the leader down to the dock and sat him in one of the seats on the left side of the boat in as natural a pose as possible.  They also retrieved the man Gray had shot at the edge of the clearing.  They bandaged his head and sat him in the seat next to the other body.  By cutting a hole in the back of each man’s shirt and tying their chests to the same short bamboo pole, the bodies sat side by side without falling over.

B
efore arranging the bindings around Gray, he briefly held the transmit button down on the radio.  It was critical those aboard the yacht bought his ruse that the radio was malfunctioning.  In seconds, an urgent voice came from the radio.  Gray had no idea what the language conveyed but when it ended, he again held the transmit button down and counted to ten.  The voice came again.

Dayah grabbed Gray’s arm.  “He say Allah testing
us.  Return to boat.  Patience revered by Allah.”

Gray grinned and gave the transmit button two quick clicks.  After they had wired the fake bindings to Gray, h
e told Keegan to build a small fire after they heard shots in case they needed to come back to the dock in a hurry.  They wired the bindings onto Anna’s arms and legs, and Shinobu took his seat at the helm.  Keegan threw them the mooring lines and Shinobu started the engine and pulled away from the dock.