Rebels of Mindanao (24 page)

“How does the rebel unit here fit into their overall order of battle, Colonel?” Mundy asked.

“The Abu Sayaf is a partner of the Jemaah Islamiyah, a local cell of Al Qaeda, but something new is going on. I call it the ‘unseen hand' that funnels resources all the way from the Middle East into this remote province,” Liu explained.

“The Abu Sayaf is a spent force; they have no national organization, no popular support,” was Hayes' analysis.

“That's what we thought too, but now with this ‘unseen hand,' as the Colonel says, things could change. They're gaining momentum, and the initiative,” Mundy conjectured.

“Time to turn that momentum the other way.” Thornton saw the thinking was getting all muddled—too many interests and opinions involved. He was ready to do the job without the TFD; in fact, he wanted STAGCOM to do the job, alone, and lobbied Colonel Liu. “Reggie, this is a small unit operation. STAGCOM can handle it. No need for you to get your hands dirty.” He tried to convince the TFD Commander.

“I've thought about that. You'll notice that I have kept my men on hold, not deployed, until we agree on our approach here,” Colonel Liu responded, thinking that he could save his power for a more decisive opportunity.

“Let's review,” said Mundy, wanting to stay involved. “We have them pinpointed. We have options: call in an air strike with smart bombs, employ artillery, or just continue to follow and observe, and perhaps most importantly, deduce where they are headed and therefore what might be their final goal. We have the luxury of waiting until they get to wherever they're going.”

“We have the drop on them, but do we have a chance to encircle them all?” Liu considered the value of a quick and easy victory, indulging himself in thinking about getting his first star after all these years.

“Not good enough for you,” Thornton reminded Liu. “A quick win might be good enough for my purposes, but your job wouldn't be done. For you, Colonel, and your country, it's not just about the unseen hand carrying in the cash—although that aspect could be good for me personally. You want to eliminate all the Abu Sayaf cell leaders here. Then Al Qaeda in Syria or someplace else will not have some other terrorist cell to which it could provide more money. We cannot take out the source of the funding, but you can take out the operational leaders here. They'll be harder to replace. Let STAGCOM handle what we have here. I'll get my reward, and maybe a place to live in Mindanao that's safe. Then you'll have time to clean up.”

Liu liked the idea of a win-no lose scenario. He pondered his decision a few minutes while pacing slowly in a small circle. “O.K.” He wanted to be decisive. “What do we know for sure?”

“We have STAGCOM right here and ready to go.” Elaiza was the first to respond. The men turned to her, a bit surprised that she had taken the initiative.

“Right.” Hayes, the link to the U.S. Defense Department and hence with access to U.S. intelligence, turned to Liu, “ We think they are all headed to an NPA camp someplace north of here. But we're not sure how they want to use the cash the Turk is transporting. Shouldn't we wait to find that out?”

“The NPA wants to overthrow the government of the Philippines, you know that. Not just mess around this time,” Liu said, showing his concern.

“Well, if not all of the Philippines, at least they want to take over Mindanao. There is more and more talk about a Republic of Mindanao, or some kind of new federation with or without Manila and the rest of the Philippines, but we don't know the grand strategy of the insurgency at this time, if indeed they have one.” Hayes was sharing the strategic analysis of the military types in the embassy and back in Washington. “They may have bigger objectives,” he continued. “Your government, and your army especially, must stop treating terrorists like ordinary criminals, like wife beaters or drug peddlers. Terrorists are best disposed of as soon as they are found, right here in the field. No need to hold them for trial.”

“They feel the same way about you, Major Hayes, and the rest of you Yankees,” Liu retorted. “The Abu Sayaf doesn't want to have to haul captives around or feed them for very long. And I am not in a mood to take much more bullshit from them, or from you.” He was in command of the joint operation. It was his country and his terrain, and he had had enough discussion. He would handle it. He made his decision. “We attack today, sooner rather than later. We'll take prisoners if we have to, but in the Philippines we know how to interrogate. We'll find out what we need to know.”

“Easier to decide what to do after a victory than after a defeat, right Colonel?” Elaiza's question expressed her opinion. Liu stared at her hard.

Hayes had opinions based on his own combat experience. He proposed, “Then we should attack before dark, or they could move on. Thornton is no longer following their every step.”

“Captain Agustin, join us and put up a field table.” The commander of Liu's A Company had been standing at a respectful distance from his commander.

Liu and his staff took out their maps and began to make plans with the three Americans and the Filipina who worked with them looking over their shoulders. Thornton supplemented what they knew by overlaying his personal observations onto their maps. He recommended what he thought would work best for TFD as well as for himself. “Reggie, you make some noise from the highway. We, as STAGCOM, go in and mop up; make them disappear. Then we disappear; we were never here. You declare victory and go back to Manila.”

“You don't need to overemphasize. I get it.” Liu, processing the information, then decided and told Thornton, “No. We'll hit them at 3:00
PM
. STAGCOM will
not
be involved. Gives us time to assemble an overwhelming force and time enough to execute before dark. By nightfall we will have seventeen of them either way, KIA or captives. Agustin, move out.”

This was not the time for Liu to play politics; that would come after the victory. Mundy, the observer, observed, and said to no one in particular, almost as if to confirm to himself, “I want to see how the new Task Force Davao will handle this job,” not aware that less than half a
click away, Lateef and Mahir and their small force were already starting to move quietly into attack positions on the western side of the road touching the landing zone where the Filipino officers and the Americans were talking.

Thinking they had the advantage, Colonel Liu and the others took their time working on their maps and operational plans. Liu gave permission for the TFD troops to light up cigarettes while waiting for orders. All felt confident, and Captain Agustin started to walk purposefully back toward his men in the convoy.

“Major Hayes …” John Robert Mundy started to say something that Hayes probably would not have agreed with when automatic weapon fire whistled bullets through the gaggle of officers gathered around the command post. Liu instinctively spun to his right and ducked below a twisted tree trunk. Agustin pulled out his .45 pistol as he initially jumped up and then came back down behind a stack of bags filled with some kind of grain, and aimed his weapon in the general direction of the noise, but he didn't see any targets to engage, only flashes of light from within the brush.

Thornton heard the firing of the M16's and for a moment assumed it was coming from his STAGCOM guys practicing, but when he looked in their direction he saw immediately that two of them had been wounded by gunfire. Grabbing Elaiza by the arm, he ducked down and ran back with her to check on the Otazas.

They found Pedro taking cover near where their hammocks were strung up. When Thornton saw that the firing was coming at them from the tree line, he realized that the Abu Sayaf patrol they had been following had ambushed them. Pedro did not want to be pinned down, but Thornton pushed him behind a tree. “Lay down some suppressing fire toward where the flashes are coming from. Give the TFD troops a chance to get out of their trucks!”

Elaiza bolted over to her two cousins, Eduardo and Juanito, who had been injured. A hollow-tipped bullet had shattered Eduardo's shoulder. Cement fragments from a foundation wall had peppered Juanito's left arm enough to draw blood. Elaiza and Juanito dragged Eduardo out of the direct line of fire behind the wall to bind up the wound, stopping the blood flow and holding the shoulder together. Elaiza stayed with the
more seriously wounded brother until a medic could come up from the main group farther down the road an hour after the action ended. The rest of the STAGCOM squad fired into the source of the bullets coming at them. Task Force Davao was caught in a crossfire, and their plan to attack had been preempted.

Captain Agustin was pinned down and did not have the opportunity to signal to his troops parked along the highway. But a sharp young sergeant rallied a few riflemen who had been smoking beside the vehicles and led them cautiously forward. The rest of the regular army soldiers were still inside the trucks and could not be effective at the moment. Agustin motioned to the sergeant to hold a position near the first vehicle and to lay down fire toward the attackers. The men who had not yet disembarked stuck to the floors of the trucks, frozen by fear and doubt. Before they could compose themselves, two M79 grenades hit the first and second trucks from close range turning them into clouds of blue-black smoke with fiery centers.

Captain Bautista, commander of the second company farther back in the column, crawled forward. He had not been a part of the briefing and was totally confused. He grabbed the men he could find who were outside their vehicles and deployed them into defensive positions on the western side of the road, while the burning first two trucks were still being peppered with automatic fire.

The Abu Sayaf patrol had continued firing for another thirty seconds after scoring the grenade hits on the truckloads of confused Task Force soldiers, but now Lateef assembled his troops and together they ran through the brush around the outside perimeter of the firefight and away from the marshland toward the west, withdrawing along the paths they had used on the approach and quickly putting some distance between themselves and their ambush victims. Suddenly Lateef looked back and saw his last man shredded by a volley of accurate fire. When he heard shots to his eastern flank as well, they seemed to be partially surrounded, at least on two sides. Lateef understood tactics as well as the AFP; he had learned from watching them for years, and considered how to press the advantage he had achieved. He signaled his patrol to turn to the right and to give two bursts of random but rapid fire south.

His tactic worked. The Task Force Davao troops who had counterattacked
ducked and stopped firing, confused. Having only recently awakened and still dazed from the explosion, they didn't know which direction to maneuver and established a defensive position while waiting for orders. Captain Agustin, with a squad of men he had hastily assembled on the road, moved forward into the brush far enough to see the backs of the Abu Sayaf as they sped away, and fired after them.

Two more men were lost to Lateef, but he saw the location of the squad of riflemen pursuing and wheeled into the underbrush, taking an offensive posture after he rotated his force in a counter-clockwise quarter circle relative to the advancing Task Force troops. He could see more TFD troops crossing the road. Mahir caught up with Lateef and the rest, dragging a dying or already dead comrade. From where they paused, they fired one last volley from their M16s, causing the TFD to pause momentarily. The Abu Sayaf, less than a platoon-sized force, slid farther into the jungle and retraced their steps back to where they had camped, deciding it was time to get out of the area.

Ugly Maria was the rear guard, the last one out of the area and not in much of a hurry. She saw John Robert Mundy, in dark green jungle fatigues, crouching behind some low foliage and quietly approached him from his side unseen, giving him a direct blow on the temple with the tire iron she kept with her for just such a purpose. It dazed Mundy. Ugly Maria did not want to burden Lateef with either a hostage or a decision. A broken and sharply pointed limb on a hardwood tree helped her decide. Two of the Abu Sayaf turned back to help her hoist Mundy up and impale his twitching body on the long spike of wood, the pain of the stabbing wound causing Mundy to regain consciousness just as Ugly Maria used her favorite knife to slice open his belly.

For the rest of the day and into the night the Abu Sayaf slowly but steadily continued their way due north between the Banga and the Alah Rivers, toward the prearranged meeting point with Kumander Ali. The Alah drains Lake Sebu in South Cotobato province and flows through a broad plain parallel with its brother river, the Banga. Parallel mountain ranges channel the two sibling rivers north until they join to become the Mindanao River, which continues to the seaport of Cotobato City. When he reached the river junction near the border of the province of Sultan Kudarat, Lateef ordered his men to take up defensive positions
within the triangle formed by the rivers, leaving only their southern flank exposed to pursuers. Mahir and one cargo boy were well guarded in the center of the new camp, holding the vital stash of U.S. dollars that would seed the revolution.

C
olonel Reginald J. Liu had been professionally humiliated on the field at Koronadal in a sloppy battle that caught him unprepared, and he was angry. He was perspiring not only from the heat and the humidity but also from frustration, sweat trickling down his face, a face more rounded now than when he was younger, eyes peeking from behind pudgy and slanted eyelids reflecting the half of his ancestry that was Chinese and narrowed by years of squinting down a rifle sight. Liu may have put on a few pounds, but his legs were muscled and powerful from training and leading soldiers in combat. Now he was being tested again. One minor American State Department official had been killed and two of the STAGCOM irregulars wounded, one seriously. Liu had also lost five soldiers. He commanded a field force far superior to the enemy paramilitary group that had attacked him, but their smaller force had beaten him in the first encounter of what would become known as the Mindanao Civil War. Even with high-tech, secret American intelligence
and electronics surveillance technologies providing exact knowledge of the enemy's position, the Abu Sayaf had gotten the jump on him. Maybe it was pure dumb luck, but it counted. And he had absolutely no excuse why his security elements had been unable to detect the Abu Sayaf.