Rebels of Mindanao (10 page)

“We were born here. That's our mother working in the kitchen. This is her place, now, because of Lateef.” Jasmine explained.

“But since we're eighteen now, we have new work, in the city.” Jade seemed excited to have someone to speak to about her experience.

Jasmine confirmed, “We dance. It's fun. The money helps our mother.”

“Especially when the great festival, Kadayawan, starts next Thursday, then we'll be back in the city. It's not far by bus.”

“But now's a slow time, and we came back here to help.”

It was obvious to Mahir that the twins knew everything, and he relaxed. “I heard about Kadayawan. Lateef told me. That's the time we will attack.”

Jasmine made it clear she knew what was going on. “We know. You may need to return here, if there is a problem.”

“Or maybe if there is no problem.” Jade moved closer to Mahir, touching his thigh with hers as they sat. “Do you have a wife?” she asked.

“Yes.” Mahir answered, becoming confused.

“Is she as pretty as we are?” Jasmine touched Mahir's hand. “Many men say the girls of Mindanao are very special.”

Jasmine closed her hand around Mahir's and felt no resistance as she gently coaxed him to stand.

Jade wanted to be included and began to tow him gently toward the steps to their room. “Maybe we can explain better upstairs.”

On the second floor, Jade and Jasmine slowly undressed each other while Mahir watched, then they undressed him and demonstrated why Muslim men are permitted more than one wife. Mahir was at first reluctant, thinking about his loyal wife and his infant son. But the physical reality was near and his family far. His desire became irresistible when they let their long, soft hair fall down and around him. He stopped thinking. He could not stop himself as the three became creative on the floor, their only bed being a thin pad covered with a single bed sheet.

Early the next morning the sisters were gone. But now he knew where to retreat if he had no other option. It all made sense now. The answer to his question was apparent, and it put his mind at ease that he had given Lateef access to some of the money. Sheik Kemal had kept his promise.

Lateef pulled his team together and this time drove himself, with Lito sitting bound-up between him and Mahir. Ugly Maria and the other men rode in the back, perched on the load of dynamite, now covered with a tarp.

The rest of the week they stayed in a new camp at a resort between the lake and the ocean, a few kilometers south of Davao City. The Abu Sayaf soldiers brought to camp the usual supplies of mangos and durian and other tree crops from the forests around them, which the farmers donated to the cause, willingly or unwillingly. The stolen truck was made into a handsome parade float covered with fruit and flowers shaped into a towering, purple peacock, innocent and lovely, but blocks of dynamite were tightly packed into its bowels. That would make a nice present for the mayor of Davao City at the Kadayawan festival. Neither
the Philippine National Police (the PNP) nor the Task Force Davao—the local army contingent—would challenge such a thing of beauty slowly moving into the assembly area for the extravaganza called Kadayawan.

A
fter she showered, Elaiza pulled a long red tee shirt over her head as a full-length dress and went outside to sit on the patio off her first floor room. Thornton's place in Toril, a village west of Davao City, was nice enough, small but with four bedrooms, she guessed. He apparently had a master suite on the second floor. Her small room must have been for one of the servants. She thought he must have two or three, probably an entire family working for him; in the Philippines, that would not cost much. She looked around her room. The few personal things lying about showed that others lived there. They must have pushed together into the other rooms to make a place for her.

The aroma of sizzling pork fat and onions meant someone was cooking a hearty breakfast in the “dirty kitchen,” the outdoor cooking area in the back. She walked around the side of the house from the patio to the source of the cooking aromas.

Thornton was making fried eggs and ham. He looked interesting but
out of place, wearing old jeans, well-scuffed Tony Lama boots and a safari shirt.

“Good morning, ready to go to war?' she asked.

“Magandang umaga,”
he answered, smiling, “not if I can help it. Let's try to do this job as quick and easy as we can.”

“Do you mean the STAGCOM mission, or breakfast?” Elaiza teased Thornton, who gave her a warm smile.

“First one, than the other,” he responded. “Breakfast sounds better than STAGCOM, but we're stuck with the acronym, not as bad as Strategic Support Command, the name Hargens
wanted
to give us.”

“It sounds silly.” Thornton thought she looked like a schoolgirl when she talked that way.

“Well, General Hargens created the name for us while I was with him in Manila. It sounds official and gives our team status with the paper shufflers at the embassy. They had to name the operation something to get the project funded.”

“And you're the boss, right, Kapitan Tomas?”

“Yep. It's my command. First one since Vietnam. Just you and me—a young woman and an old guy—taking on an entire insurrection.” Thornton winked at her. She turned her back and made it clear she didn't like to be winked at.

“You know there will have to be more than just me.” Elaiza wanted to be professional. “My boss told me you needed some men with guns, a few really good warriors who know their way around. Maybe I can hook you up with the Otazas, Manobo natives from Agusan who can shoot and fight.”

“If you say so, I'll check them out. I have another guy joining us, if I can convince him. He's younger than me and older than you, a retired U.S. Army combat veteran. We worked together before on a project like this, and we work together now in my construction company. We should be able to train the guys you get.”

“I know you have to count on me to provide your ‘local assets,' as you Americans refer to the people who work for you here. I want only to recruit from my region, from my tribe, that's where I have contacts I can trust.”

“Right. Thanks. The man I want is Starke, Hank Starke, he would be my tactical leader, our First Sergeant.

“We'll see how he works with my guys. Nice place you have here.”

Thornton and his company had built the house as a model home. First it served as his showroom and office, but as the business grew he took it for his own. Now, in the early morning and over breakfast, still tired after having spent most of the previous day traveling and then getting briefed at the consulate, Thornton talked with Elaiza about the mission from General Hargens.

Thornton had already accepted the deal, and Elaiza had been assigned to him as part of her job, but he wanted to sense her active involvement and personal commitment. While it was still cool, with an early breeze coming in off the Celebes Sea, Thornton quietly talked about his meeting in Manila with Hargens. He told her about the Turkish terrorist who was bringing in money from Syria to finance revolution in Mindanao, and that someone highly placed in the American government wanted his help to take the guy out.

Damn him, just enough info to get me involved and not enough to answer my questions, she thought, and broached the subject by asking, “Kapitan Tomas, it sounds to me like you have already decided on something, I see from how you squint and focus your eyes when you talk. What would you do if I didn't come along?”

Thornton told her the simple truth. “I would still do it, you know. But you're a volunteer, you could go back to Manila, or simply quit. I wouldn't want you on this mission unless we're in it together, as partners. I need you.”

Elaiza wasn't satisfied with his sketchy answer and asked him, her voice the slightest bit skeptical, “Why such a change in attitude toward me? I thought you wanted some muscle. You've been out of the army a long time. Why not let your old army buddies and younger volunteers fight this war.” She looked up at him with her brow wrinkled.

“It's not an army thing. Downs's position in our government now is much higher than an army job. He gets some of his information from the CIA, but doesn't believe all of it. He doesn't trust their competence on the ground, certainly not in Mindanao. Here, they're clueless, but they don't know they're clueless, a fatal combination.

“And as far as my Army buddies are concerned, my old roommates know me. I did a job for a guy named Charlie Downs in Eastern Europe one time, as the Cold War ended. There were some problems.

“But you're a combat veteran, right?”

“Yes, even wounded in the Tet offensive when the First Air Cav Headquarters in An Khe was mortared, but I didn't want to go to Viet Nam and if I could have gotten out of it, honorably, I would have. It was a waste of time.”

Elaiza saw that he wanted to talk, and was quiet as he continued. “I reported to the office of the Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army in 1967 and told him I thought we were fighting the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. I actually used those words, long before they became trite. The old general listened and was quiet, then called me to attention and said, ‘Captain Thornton, you are going to Viet Nam!' Somehow, having told the Vice Chief of Staff what I thought, I felt OK with going. I had made my statement. I served my year there and got out after a tour back at the Point teaching German. I enjoyed being an instructor and teaching a foreign language, but that was not a career path for me. Got out as fast as I could for a career in international business. I still got to travel, but that led to complications. I left a wife and child behind to take that assignment in Eastern Europe for Charlie Downs, who was in the CIA then.”

“I thought you were a businessman. I didn't know you were an agent.”

“I'm not, never was, not a professional. I was a businessman, but they needed a businessman. Their guys on the ground were too conspicuous.”

“Just like here, it's easy for us to tell who they are.” Elaiza had to agree with him. “Missionaries, someone as obvious as Santa Claus in the jungle, or big white guys in blue jeans bumbling around the hotels and bars.”

“I'm a big white guy in jeans.”

“Yes, but you don't pretend to be anything else.”

“That's why Hargens and Downs came after me, again. Elaiza, this shouldn't be a difficult thing for us to do. It could earn me enough dollars to really disappear, or reappear wherever I want, anywhere.”

“Well, I like it here; and I can't take any money. I'm a government employee.”

“You won't like it here if Mindanao becomes a war zone. But if we take this guy out, I can keep the cash, and you will surely be promoted.”

“But how will you do it? You're just another Yankee who doesn't
speak our language too well, you can't hide, and if the CIA is lost in the woods, you will be too.”

“No. I won't be. I know my way around in the
bundok
a lot better than you think I do. And Hargens and Downs know it. They know that when the time comes I'll make the decisions they would like to make, but can't in their positions. I'll make the right things happen this time, for sure. I think that with a team of men from your tribe, if we organize them and give them the right tools, we can keep the Turk from delivering the money to Kumander Ali. That way we all win, big.”

“We'll see. I hope to be able to convince Uncle Pedro. Maybe he could get his brothers, the Otaza brothers. But I want to hear more about the deal you made.”

“It's straightforward. The U.S. Embassy in Manila has tracked the infiltrator as far as his landing in Mindanao. He's a Turk, Mahir Hakki, and he has hooked up with the local Al Qaeda cell, the Abu Sayaf, headed up by some joker called Lateef, and they're moving around and already active in Maguindanao and Sultan Kudarat provinces.”

“They've been doing things like that for years. So what?”

“This time it's different. The Turk has five million U.S. in cash. If he can get it to Kumander Ali, they can use it right now to start a revolution your Filipino brothers might not win.” Now she had the essential background and information.

“How would you end the fighting, forever? What would you do?” she asked.

Thornton pretended to be serious, but had a slight grin. “
Mais il faut cultiver notre jardin
.”

“That doesn't sound like German.” Elaiza's brow wrinkled again.

“No, French. Voltaire. The last line in
Candide
. ‘Let us go work together in the garden.'”

“More riddles.”

“Maybe. Here's another. Life in Mindanao is like that mango tree.” Thornton pointed to a huge tree growing across the street from them and told her the story.

Evenings when the moon rose early it would outline the ancient mango tree on the opposite side of the road, its branches reaching upwards at sharp and variant angles to form ominous shapes. The tree
must have been only a seedling when the Japanese invaded Mindanao, perhaps one of hundreds in a commercial plantation. Now it stood alone. Some said the tree was split when it was a seedling, as a marker by the withdrawing and defeated Japanese soldiers who had hidden gold under it, so they could find the tree when they returned. There were many legends of gold stolen by the Japanese and hidden in Mindanao. But the Japanese never returned, and over the generations the split tree grew, the forks divided just above the ground, growing into two huge trunks of equal size a yard thick and standing sixty feet into the sky.

After the yearly monsoon season, the mango tree burst forth with thousands of small, sweet mangos that struggled to ripen in the sun, but few managed to hang connected to their mother tree long enough to turn golden. Every day the tree was attacked by its only natural enemy, the young men who lived on the other side of the wall. Early in the morning on their way to work, at noon when they sneaked some
shabu
, illegal crystal meth, or when they returned in the evening and gathered to smoke, they would assemble behind the wall. When the farmer who owned the land was not there, the hoodlums would charge across the cornfield planted around the tree to throw anything heavy they could find at its fruit-laden branches. With stones that returned to earth to be used again, heavy wooden clubs, and rusty tools they attacked the old tree, violated its branches and brought down the unripe, green fruit still attached to the young outer branches of the cruelly assaulted tree, mangos that had to be eaten immediately or would soon rot in the heat after they split their skins when they hit the ground. Some of the more enterprising boys climbed the tree to its higher branches where from their perches they shook the outer limbs and dozens of green mangos would fall, delivering them to the giggles of the men below. At least once a year, one of the hooligans would accidentally fall along with his harvest, breaking a bone falling from such a height, and there was rumor of a death some years past. The young men ate the unripe harvest on the spot, before the farmer could chase them away. The boys thought it was great sport to get free fruit and to outwit the old farmer.