Rebels of Mindanao (33 page)

Distracted by the negotiations of the afternoon, Ali was not aware that Task Force Davao was on the move until Lateef informed him that forward sentries had seen movement below. Ali ordered Lateef to organize a defense immediately.

Lateef's men got lucky. They blended into the tree line below Itig town and parallel to the sugar cane field that Captain Agustin had been ordered to cross with one of the platoons from his infantry company to probe the NPA perimeter. The NPA outposts had been well instructed this time; they were ordered not to fire until Lateef fired his pistol, or they would lose a week's incentive pay of candy bars for firing too early. This was a serious threat; they held their fire.

Hayes was close to Captain Agustin as they moved forward, expecting eventually to find a guard leaning against a tree and smoking somewhere, if he was awake. But Hayes was surprised when he heard a single .45 pistol shot, followed by a hail of hostile bullets. The task force probe had been successful. Ironically, Agustin's men found the enemy, but not surreptitiously; they had been found first. Agustin's men had advanced too far forward without cover and too quickly. They were
forced to back away, unaware that Mahir's NPA fire team was positioned behind a wooden pole fence outlining the field.

Major Hayes jumped away from his position and sprinted for cover away from his unseen adversaries. But an Abu Sayaf sniper fired at him and a rifle bullet hit his leg, breaking the thighbone. Hayes had been told to remain out of the line of possible fire, but because he was too far on the flank, the patrol could not rescue him while they themselves were doing the low crawl under a fusillade fired over their heads by Lateef's irregulars.

Lateef's fire team leader on the left flank saw Hayes go down, and went to end his pain and noise, but seeing that he was an American officer, thought Kumander Ali might have a better use for him, alive. He ordered two of his riflemen to wrap the American in a cloth sack and drag him back to headquarters. They tied up his wound, but did not set the broken bone sticking out through his torn trouser leg, thus they only succeeded in stopping him from bleeding to death for the time being.

Captain Agustin, after learning that Major Hayes' body had been recovered by the hostile forces, decided to advise Colonel Liu immediately on this sudden development. As soon as there was radio contact, Agustin reported, “Cardinal 6, this is Cardinal 3, observer probable KIA, body carried back by withdrawing NPA, over.”

Colonel Liu understood. “Damn,” he said out loud to no one in particular, “they've killed or captured Hayes. What an awful mess. I gotta get him back.” And he then went back on his radio, this time to De la Rosa's artillery. “Redfire 6, this is Cardinal 6, Fire Mission, over.”

They exchanged call signs and protocol, and Liu ordered, “Give me one volley of high explosive, 100 meters due south of Itig, Charlie one six four, over.”

“Roger, Cardinal 6, on the way,” reported the fire direction center. A minute later six artillery rounds exploded on target, but also right on the STAGCOM position.

“What the hell!” Starke yelled as the first round exploded.

Thornton knew what it was. “Damn him, Liu's started too soon again. Our surprise is ruined. We'll have to move forward. Let's get the hell outta here!”

Behind the first explosion, Thornton saw the NPA withdrawing and
fired at them with his carbine. Like it or not, the battle had begun and they were suddenly in the middle of it as more rounds exploded all around them. Elaiza motioned the other Otazas forward to follow her. An NPA soldier rushed them while Thornton was kneeling near her firing his rifle, but Elaiza shot their attacker with her pistol full in the chest just as Thornton fired at a charging enemy behind her. Their eyes met in a microsecond-thank you-and then the second round of Liu's artillery hit, and with a whoop and a flash both of them were thrown up into the air, Elaiza disappearing behind a ball of fire and smoke. Pedro tackled Thornton, whose clothing was on fire, and wrestled him to the ground, rolling him to put out the flames.

“Pedro, let me up,” Thornton was still dazed, but keenly aware of what had happened. “I've got to find Elaiza!”

“She's gone,” was all Pedro could say. Thornton charged into the area of the blast's impact, but there was nothing to see, and he collapsed in shock and sorrow.

T
hey gave Major Hayes an aspirin and drinking water, hoping to keep him alive; perhaps he could be traded for something. But if he died, at least his corpse would be an embarrassment to the Americans and his death in a battle with the AFP would prove to voters in the coming election that the capitalist Americans were supporting the Tagalogs in oppressing the poor farmers of Mindanao. Hayes regained consciousness at times during the night, smelling the aroma of rotting jungle undergrowth and camp refuse. But the smell of his own clotted blood and the decomposition of his festering wound forewarned him of the distinct possibility of gangrene and a short future, which could end in the Philippine jungle. He spent the night in and out of consciousness, in and out of pain.

The leaders were moderately surprised when Mahir walked into camp leading Elaiza on a rope tied around her neck, her hands bound in front of her. She did not seem special to them, just another woman,
probably one of the girls who did the cooking for the American trespassers. He untied her hands and put her with their other captive. They would find a use for her.

In a moment of awareness, Hayes thought, “Does it matter? Does anyone care? Does it make a difference if my name will be carved on a stone memorial somewhere in Manila, or maybe just a photograph with a heroic caption hung perpetually on the embassy wall after my body is shipped back to Harlingen for my wife and kids to bury?”

He thought he was dreaming. Suddenly a woman was sitting beside him; he recognized her. He mumbled a name Elaiza did not understand, “ … is it you?” he heard himself asking.

“Major Hayes, what have they done to you?” Elaiza tried to comfort him.

Recognition finally dawned. “Oh. Elaiza. Most of this I did to myself. I should not be here.” Hayes looked down at the plastic tape that tied his hands. “What happened to you?”

“I'm OK. You're a mess. Don't blame yourself for what these hoodlums have done to you.” Elaiza's hands were free, but one of her legs was tied firmly to a tree on a long leash, and the armed guard who watched them both prevented any escape. She sat by Hayes and put her hand on his forehead.

Hayes flinched. He tried to control his pain and told Elaiza, “There was a time before, during the first Gulf War, when I almost died in combat. I wish I had. Am I going to die now? How would my life have unfolded if I hadn't gone on that patrol for my idle curiosity? I don't want my family to know how I died.”

“I'll tell them,”—Elaiza looked into his eyes and touched his chin to make him look at her—“I'll tell them the way you'd want me to.” From the way she said it, Hayes now knew he would never see them again.

Walking between the shacks carrying a cup of Nescafe, Kumander Ali looked down at Hayes. Ali was preoccupied with planning what to do now that he knew the Filipinos had located his headquarters. Would they get the Americans to call in an air strike? He had heard about so-called smart bombs which could be quietly guided downward from unseen aircraft thousands of feet above the clouds, accurately impacting in the common area of the camp, even before his men could leave the area. While random ideas like these bounced around in his head, he
decided to relocate most of his military force after reeducating them with his philosophy. Then they could scatter back to their villages with money in their hands and a list of approved voters in their pockets.

Ali did not want the eternal responsibility for feeding his followers and the entourages they had brought with them on the trek. It was one thing to join up with the movement; it was another thing to live off of it. He heard but could not see a jet fly over; it was too low to be a commercial liner on a flight path into the airport at Koronadal, and too high to have seen them, unless there were some new optical technologies the Philippine Air Force had that he did not know about. Now he heard fixed-wing military aircraft whirring in the distance parallel to the coast, while two helicopters chop-chopped in the opposite direction low over the palms. He was beginning to suspect all sounds.

Mahir went over to Hayes and looked at his wound but did not touch him or his bandaged leg, tied with what was really more of a tourniquet than a bandage. The flesh had turned a speckled black below where the wound was tied off to keep blood from pumping out, probably early symptoms of gangrene.

“What does it all mean?” Mahir thought, but only asked Hayes in English, “Are you happy to die here?”

“You, Brother, have the power to let him live.” Elaiza was still beside Hayes.

“Shut up, woman!” Mahir was not interested in some female's ideas about brotherhood.

“I am not happy to die anywhere just yet,” Hayes answered his captor with a surly and proud, slightly crooked smile, “but I may not get my wish.”

Mahir observed more than spoke, “I think you will get your chance to meet your God soon, whether it is your wish or not.” He could not help throwing out his question, almost rhetorically, “Was it worth it to you?”

Hayes did not give Mahir the satisfaction of hearing his doubt, but thought, “It doesn't seem so now, but it did before. Most men dying in combat die suddenly, without having a chance to think about it; their decisions were made in their minds long before they found themselves faced with the choice.” The single aspirin was not doing much good; thank God the bandage was tight. It throbbed, but it would hurt worse if blood were allowed to pump into the dying flesh. The blood vessels in
his leg were lying open, and Elaiza chased away the fat, black flies attracted to the wound.

Seeing life begin to slip from his captive's grasp, Mahir thought about his own wife and son, their own future. Why take chances? He had enough now to live his dream, their dreams together. Why can man not quit when he is ahead and just live his life? Why waste it on these hopeless souls and their desperate dreams?

Neither Mahir nor Hayes would ever know the answers to the questions they were asking themselves and each other.

Mahir did not stop Elaiza from ministering to Hayes. He just left them alone.

Two women were preparing lunch for their men in a grassy patch between the huts. They had carrots today, and they peeled the skins of the vegetables and fed them to the goats. Waiting for the food to cook, a naked child defecated while several piglets waited in anticipation for him to finish. Mahir wondered why, in a society that is underfed to the point of malnutrition, the part of the vegetable that contains the most nutrients and vitamins would be discarded. They were lucky today also to have rice with the vegetables—rice steamed in covered cooking pots, rice that was imported from Vietnam, the new breadbasket of Southeast Asia. The Philippines, with all its rainfall and tropical heat and once an exporter of the grain, could no longer grow enough rice to feed its own population; land usage was being converted to more valuable crops, like banana and mango, for export to Japan and Europe. Mindanao was a fruit basket, but for the NPA in bivouac such delicacies were hard to locate, and they ate what they found. Mahir saw the impossibility of the NPA cause in this vignette; these were the lucky ones, those who had rice today. Go ahead, let them vote, nothing will change, nothing matters.

Mahir told the women to give a bowl of their rice to Elaiza. She fed it all to Hayes, except for a few spoonfuls she fed to a wounded enemy soldier propped on the other side of the tree. The latter was a human being too, and he was her countryman.

Mahir leaned against the pole holding up the corner of the tent in front of Ali's headquarters. After watching the two for a while in thought, he said to Hayes, “You have come here for an evil purpose, and you will die knowing you have died stupidly for an evil cause.”

“Evil is blowing up a synagogue. Stupidity is blowing it up on a Friday, when no Jews are present, killing only your own Muslim brothers. Stupidity is blowing up a workers' barracks in Saudi Arabia, not knowing that the Americans had moved out of it two years before. Even if you think I'm evil, you must know that you are fighting for a stupid cause, and you must live knowing that.” Hayes' answer to Mahir just came out spontaneously. He had not even thought about the flawed logic of his enemy before in the exact words that conveyed his thoughts, since “stupid” was a word that hit hard in this culture, especially when the hearer knew it was true.

The day became hotter, and more flies gathered. Hayes' presence was beginning to irritate his captors. Lateef approached where Mahir was standing and discreetly took charge of the situation. He ordered the guard watching Elaiza to tie her hands again and push a ball of cloth into her mouth and tape it in place. They had heard enough from the woman.

Lateef was more experienced in these matters than Mahir. Under Ali's orders, he cut the tourniquet and Hayes twitched as blood seeped rather than pulsed out of his limp body. The suddenness of the pain caused by the blood flowing into crushed muscles brought him back to life enough to say through dry lips, “I thought Allah did not allow the killing of innocent people.”

Lateef was the one to answer, irritated at the insolence, “Allah does not allow the killing of innocent people, but you are a killer, and the Koran teaches that killers should be killed.”

“Then you are not a true Muslim, you who pretend to be a judge, you who permit violence to guide your life.” Hayes could act as judge as well as Lateef and Ali.

But Ali had already determined that since Hayes had little time to live, no matter what happened, he wanted to get the most leverage possible from his death, an event sure to stir up the Americans. Better to be proactive, execute him rather than let him die, get some good press out of it. Lateef moved Hayes inside the radio station and tied him to a stool.