Sudden Threat (8 page)

“Viper base, this is Bushmaster six, over.”

“Bushmaster six, this is Viper base. Send it, over.” The response was immediate and reassuring. He never doubted that it would not be, but his sense of isolation had grown as the realization of Peterson’s death settled over him.

“This is Bushmaster six, we are in Las Vegas. Number two went to Montana, over.” Las Vegas was the code for the rally point his team currently occupied and Montana was the unit’s code for someone missing in action. Peterson was number two on the unit manning roster. After a brief pause, Ramsey heard the voice on the other end mutter, “Christ almighty.” He quickly pressed the button on his handset to squelch the words. While the satellite communications were secured through encryption, the embassy was monitoring on the same frequency and he was unsure of the allegiance of some of the Filipinos who worked in the building.

“Wait one, Bushmaster.” Ramsey waited, assuming the battalion commander was being paged.

“Bushmaster six, Viper six,” the commander said, using his call sign. “Say again sitrep.” Commanders never trusted initial reports from radio and telephone operators so always had to hear a second iteration.

“This is Bushmaster six. I say again that we are in Las Vegas and that number two went to Montana.”

“Roger. Any other information?”

“Negative.”

“Roger. Go Yankees, out.”

“Out,” Ramsey said. “Go Yankees” was the code signaling Ramsey to continue the mission. “Go Dodgers” would have meant to abort the mission. He was sure the battalion commander was just as pained over Peterson’s loss as he was, but Ramsey knew the man to be a professional who realized that there were eleven other lives at stake. Plus, long radio conversations were routinely intercepted and got people killed. Ramsey passed the word that they had made contact with battalion and passed on the message of “Go Yankees.” His Special Forces soldiers expected nothing less.

From his perch, he could see movement some 550 meters below. Looking at the map, he deter-mined his location to be about twenty-five kilometers east of a small village named Compostela. They had jumped parallel to a major highway, which provided the most direct route from the northern port city of Surigao, through Davao, and to the southern tip of the island near a town called General Santos. With the searing sun illuminating the entire valley and the Abu Sayyaf seeming, for the moment, not to be on his tail, Ramsey could see that Minda-nao was a beautiful island. To his north were a high plains area and another range of mountains. To his west was a rain forest that rose to 2500 meters in another mountain range. He could see where several rivers converged into the southern portion of Mindanao at the site of a town called Datu Piang. Just beyond Datu Piang was another mountain range, which seemed to be the steepest of them all. From afar most of the forests were dotted green and brown. Ramsey correctly assumed the brown spots to be clear-cut areas where relentless loggers had shredded enclaves of history and time.

He did a quick map resection to verify his location. While the GPS was usually accurate, he occasionally backed up its data with his own calculations. He liked the technology, but trusted his mental processes more.

He figured azimuths to three known points that he could identify on the map, a mountain peak, a road intersection, and a radio tower. He was surprised to see the radio tower, but was glad it was there. He then converted the azimuths to back azimuths by subtracting or adding 180 degrees. Then he drew a line from each point on the map along the back azimuths. The point at which the three lines intersected was his team’s location. He had them positioned on an eleven-hundred-meter mountain that separated the towns of Compostela and Cateel. That was good news. A beach near Cateel Bay was where the Filipinos were to pick up his team in three days.

“We should’ve gone back sooner,” Ramsey said to SFC Jones.

“Shit, Major, we’ve been on the go since last night. That’s an L-shaped ambush waiting to happen. You done right, keeping the rest of the team safe,” Jones responded.

“He saved my life. He hooked me up and threw me over the ramp.”

“Go easy on yourself, sir,” Jones said. “You’d have done the same for him. Plus, I ain’t convinced he’s dead.” Jones’s last statement trailed off in an unconvincing manner. They all knew.

“Lonnie had to pull me away from the wreckage last night. I didn’t want to leave, but there were so many of those bastards crawling all over both planes. Our move time had come and gone, and Lonnie kept telling me we had to leave, that maybe we’d link up with Peterson later. I kept expecting to find him beneath a parachute lean-to chowing on an MRE or something.”

“Stop it, sir. It’s not your fault. You’ve done a hell of a job keeping us alive.”

It was true. Six times they had come within less than one hundred meters of detection, remaining motionless, practically breathless, as the Abu Sayyaf forces quickly padded by in their ragged brown and green uniforms.

In the darkness, Ramsey and Lonnie White, the medic, had finally circled back toward the drop zone. They found the area teeming with Abu Sayyaf, making undetected access to either airplane impossible. He and White had fought their way back through the steep, rocky jungle, their return trip more painful as they carried the extra weight of Peterson’s loss squarely on their shoulders. Sometimes clutching to shallow roots was the only thing that prevented them from dropping to certain death 550 meters below.

Though glad to have Ramsey and White back in the fold, the team was solemn when they saw two, not three, men re-enter the patrol base.

Ramsey stuffed his map back in his rucksack, hearing Benson approach from the north as he led his patrol back into the base camp.

Sergeant First Class Benson knelt next to Ramsey, squatting in the high, misty jungle, listening to the eerie animal sounds of monkeys and macaws high in the trees. They had found a seemingly secure spot about five kilometers from where they had started. In all they had walked nearly ten kilometers, doubling back on their own trail on the bet that the Abu Sayyaf would not cover the same ground twice. So far, they had been correct.

“Sir, we’ve got some weird shit for you,” Benson said, sweat streaming down his green-and-black-painted face.

“Surprise me. I need some interesting news,” Ramsey said, pulling out a tin of smokeless tobacco and stuffing a good wad into his cheek. His face was stark and unshaven. He pulled his flop hat off and scratched his oily brown hair.

“We found a fence and just beyond that, a path. It’s well-groomed, with gravel laid between two-by-fours. There are signs along it with Chinese writing on them. We didn’t take any. Didn’t want to raise eyebrows. As it was, we saw some enemy, we think, about a hundred meters and decided to break contact from the recon site. But, sir, it looked like a friggin’ jogging path.”

“Was the enemy you saw Abu Sayyaf?” Ramsey asked.

“They did have on darker green uniforms than most others we’ve seen, but I’m certain they were Asian. Like I said, we had to bug out,” Benson said, checking a green notepad in his blackened hand.

“Tell me more about the signs.”

“There’s not much more to tell, other than they had little pictures on them, like a stick figure running. Beneath one of them was a sawdust pit about three meters by three meters. You know, the kind we used for hand-to-hand combat in Ranger school.”

“Yeah. How far is it?”

“That’s the scary part. It’s only a few kilometers to the northeast, near Cateel. We saw some old mine shafts in the area. I know they mine a lot of copper and ore around here.”

“Chinese writing and mine shafts. Mmmm. Philippine government doesn’t allow much foreign mining. Maybe the local dialect is Chinese. Who knows.” Ramsey shrugged.

“If nothing else, maybe we can do some PT,” Benson said, referring to the track.

Ramsey looked at Benson, and they both shared a silent laugh. Ramsey said, “Yeah, right.” It felt good to smile.

Chuck spit into the ground, plucking scattered chunks of tobacco away from his lip.

“It’s 1300 now. You think it would be safe to head down there and check it out this early?” Ramsey asked, thinking of the thick scrub that he and Lonnie White had fought through and how much easier it might be in the daylight.

Benson nodded.

They put their rucks on, and Ramsey placed White in charge of the team, while he and Benson went on the reconnaissance mission. He had decided to take the young Filipino Ranger with them. Benson quietly objected, but Ramsey insisted that he might be able to provide some insight into the nature of the signs. He had proven useful in finding his way around and had indeed walked point on two of the extended patrols the team had performed.

The issue settled the three men began hacking their way through the jungle in search of the gravel path

Abe had completed
preparing his transition briefing for the new production team and now anticipated a peaceful run on the path in the wild jungle. To Abe, transitioning from the state of the art factory to the path was like stepping into a time machine. One minute he was the classic Japanese manufacturer, the next he was an orange-clad aborigine dashing through the rain forest.

In less than 72 hours, he would board Takishi’s Shin Meiwa and fly north to see his family for the first time in over six months. His happy mind pinged with positive thoughts of reunion. He continued to carry a picture of his wife and two little girls in the breast pocket of his white smock. He wanted to go for one last jog before he ventured home.

The contrast of his seeming captivity in the plant and the freedom of the running path made him feel like a wild mustang running across the great American plains. He had visited America often and appreciated the culture, having developed a special affinity for Western movies. His latest poem alluded to the American West.

The horses rear wildly/dashing up the rocky steepness/canyons, buttes, and piñon trees/scattered to the west/they scamper and buck/chased by the hatted hunter/whose greedy ropes/have no luck/the mustang gives chase/searching and seeking/the ropeman disappears/having been beaten.

Donning his bright orange jumpsuit, he informed the vice president for operations that he was going for a quick jog. He walked out of the electronic doors, passing the guard, who had fallen asleep leaning against the building. They pulled hard shifts, and he decided not to wake the young member of the Japanese Defense Force.

He stretched briefly, then hopped onto the railroad-tie stairway that led out of the old quarry and onto the jogging path. Over his shoulder, he could make out the beautiful blue waters of Cateel Bay. The beach had a pinkish hue as the sun lowered behind the mountains. With a joyous smile, he broke into a gallop.

Today, I am the Mustang.

The walk had
been brutal, taking them nearly half a day to move and then reconnoiter the running path. Ramsey, Benson, and the Filipino, simply known as Eddie, had sliced their way through the jungle using dead reckoning where Benson laid an azimuth on the compass, and they all followed. Benson had not found any trails leading to the curious path this time around. The jungle was mysterious that way. What was there only minutes before was gone the next time someone looked for it. They felt confident, though, that their machetes had blazed a suitable trail for the return trip.

They found the chain-link fence and the gravel path and backed off about twenty meters to set up an observation post. Ramsey determined that they should spend some time conducting reconnaissance of the surrounding area, so they took pictures with digital cameras, radioed back to the patrol base what they were doing, pulled back into an objective rally point, and planned to breach the fence near dusk.

As the sun began to dip behind the mountain range over which they had traveled, Ramsey low-crawled to the fence, snipped a hole with wire cutters, then continued to the sawdust pit with the sign and saw that it was exactly as Benson had described it. Only this sign had a stick body horizontal to the ground, a disconnected circular head, and a perpendicular arm, like it was doing a push-up. He crawled back to the observation point, holding his hush-puppy pistol in his hand and using his elbows to propel him through the thorny vines.

Benson provided cover with the MP5. As the daylight faded into darkened hues of green and brown, they knew it would soon be time to don the night-vision goggles.

“You go now. See if you can read the writing,” Ramsey said to Eddie. He had smooth brown skin. His face was soft and round, despite the long scar coursing across the right cheek. His brown eyes were wide with anticipation, glowing white around the edges in hopes of providing useful information to his benefactors. They had taken him into their protective custody and he felt with grim certainty that he was the only Filipino Ranger left alive on the island.

Eddie moved with precision and skill to the sign and knelt. After a brief moment, he looked at the Americans hiding in the brush, smiling and giving them a thumbs-up. He had studied the Japanese language for two years in school, before dropping out to become a soldier.

As he was about to move, Eddie heard a steady crunching in the gravel. He froze on one knee with his head turned over his shoulder like a spotlighted deer. From their support position, Benson immediately sighted the moving figure. The bright orange outfit made the person an easy target. He was nearly fifty meters away, about to make the turn onto the push-up pit. Eddie slowly lowered his body, slid under the sign, and eased himself into the first layer of scrub. He lay motionless as what looked like a well-groomed Japanese man in an orange jumpsuit came panting into the pit. He was running so fast that Eddie thought the man was going to land on him when he stopped, the man’s hands spraying sawdust into the Filipino’s eyes.

Benson looked quickly to Ramsey for direction, who held up his hand, motioning him to maintain status quo. The orange-clad jogger began doing push-ups, and his good form perversely, though momentarily, struck Ramsey. Head raised, not looking between his legs like so many troops have a tendency to do. He was pumping like a hydraulic machine, his head fixed on the scrub to his front. His push-ups began to slow dramatically, and it struck Ramsey as odd that he would taper off so soon. Then he stopped and froze.