“He’s probably right. What’s the next camp downstream from here?”
“Small one about ten miles down, then twenty-five miles or so to a big camp.”
“Piang, why is it so big?”
“Much training done there. I was there for two months learning how to shoot, to rig bombs, how to kidnap, and fighting with a knife.”
“Yet you didn’t fight me when I touched my knife to your side.”
“I am not a fighter. I am a clerk. I should have been in the office and killed with the others there. I was late getting back.”
“How many men at the training camp?”
“Sometimes two hundred. We are gaining in strength. This camp was mostly to recruit from the surrounding area. To get young men to come and fight for independence.”
“What’s the name of your top leader now?”
“He is called Muhammad Al Hillah.”
“Is he often at the training center?”
“Yes, often.”
“Good, Piang, you may sit down and relax. We’ll be here for a while.” Juan Ejercito walked into the woods, circled around, and came up behind the rebel so quietly not even Lam could hear him. Lam didn’t watch him. He looked away. A moment later a shot jolted into the stillness of the jungle. A dozen different insects and birds went silent at the sound.
Piang’s head slammed forward from the round that shattered the back of his skull and killed him immediately.
“Time we move south,” Juan said. “It looks like we have a thirty-five-mile hike ahead of us.”
They were about halfway to the second camp, near where they had left the duffel bag, when Juan stopped and turned to Lam.
“Did you disapprove of my execution of the rebel?”
Lam shook his head. “No, not at all. SEALs take no prisoners, and leave no wounded on an operation. Had to be done. We should be almost to that cleared field.”
Five minutes later they came to the field and to the spot where they had left the duffel. It was still there. They put on their combat vests, dug out the backpacks, and stowed most of the ammunition and clothes and food into them. Then they changed their minds and left all of the extra clothes.
“Better food than a clean shirt,” Lam said. When they finished packing, they had most of the gear. They stashed the duffel again and covered it up, then hiked south along the faint trail. Four miles downstream they came to the village where they had attacked earlier and killed two of the rebels. They skirted it, moving into the jungle, and then worked on past. There was nothing they could do there, and they didn’t want the locals to remember them moving south. Twice they saw and smelled smoke from cooking fires. They passed them, but did not see any sign of villages. Just before dusk they heard a strange sound from south on the trail.
“Dirt bike moving fast,” Lam said. “Let’s take him.”
They moved into the trees beside the trail and motioned for fields of fire. They both would fire down-trail when the biker was within twenty feet. They waited.
The sound grew louder, and then the bike came around a slight bend in the trail and headed for them. One rider with helmet and goggles. Both men lifted their MP-5’s and in sync leaned around the trees and fired two three-round bursts of the 9mm Parabellum. Eight of the twelve rounds hit the rider. He threw up his hands, and the bike slued to the left into a tree and the rider toppled off the back, sprawling on the ground, never knowing what hit him. Four of the rounds hit his chest, two his neck, and two his head. They pulled the body off the trail into the brush and checked his pockets. There was a folder inside his shirt that had four bullet holes in it, but also a dozen sheets of paper and writing, all in English.
Juan righted the cycle and put down the stand. He examined it, and found no damage other than a scraped front fender. The double seat looked inviting, but the front man would have to drop half the goods in his pack. Juan at once took off his pack and threw out the bulky MREs and three boxes of Parabellum rounds. He put it back on, and they tried both sitting on the machine.
“Yes,” Lam said. “We can do this. We have twenty-five miles and an hour of sunlight left. We should be able to do most of it.”
A half hour later, they realized that the average speed on the rough trail was about fifteen miles an hour. They settled for that.
By the time darkness swept in on them in a two-minute stretch, they were ready to find a spot to spend the night.
They rolled the bike well off the trail and found a place on a small rise where they could keep watch on the trail and still have good cover. Not even taking the SATCOM off his back reminded Lam that he was supposed to radio in every night at midnight. He checked his watch. 0200. Too late by then. The next night there would be lots more to tell Murdock. He eased his head onto his pack and went to sleep.
Lam woke up the next morning, and looked down to see a black and orange snake three feet long crawling over his legs.
“Don’t move,” Juan said from somewhere behind him. “He’s just out looking for breakfast and he decided you were too damn big.”
The snake took his time, his forked tongue tasting the air as he moved. He soon zeroed in on a clump of grass nearby. The snake moved forward slowly. Lam could not see any movement in the grass. Then, a moment later, the snake struck. Its head came out of the grass holding a six-inch-long ratlike rodent in its jaws. Its fangs were buried in the animal’s back and stomach.
“Breakfast,” Juan said. “Wait just a minute and he’ll slither away and start unhinging his jaws so he can swallow that critter whole.”
“Glad I’m not that size,” Lam said. “Poisonous?”
“Deadly on anything under a hundred pounds. On us it would be extremely painful and we’d take two days off and let the swelling go down. About the same as your rattlesnake.”
“Thanks for waking me up.”
“Best to let them move along. I usually don’t kill them. They have a right to live the same as I do.”
They ate MREs for breakfast, then loaded up and headed down the trail.
“Figure we covered fifteen miles last night,” Juan said. “Ten miles ahead we should find some friends.”
“We stash the bike at least two miles this side,” Lam said. “They probably will have security all over the place here as much for training as for security.”
Juan shook his head. “Not two miles. We’ll leave it and our packs out four miles. You estimate our distance as we motor along. I’ve got trouble enough dodging ruts, gullies, and tree roots.”
After twenty minutes Lam slapped Juan on the shoulder and he turned off into the jungle, drove the bike as far as he could, then they hid it behind some large trees and piled brush around it.
Lam went back along their trail and wiped it out as best he could, then did the same thing for a hundred yards back down the sometimes damp trail along the increasingly strong river. They left their packs with the bike and worked down the trail on foot.
“You kept the radio?” Juan asked.
“Glued to my skin,” Lam said.
A half mile down the trail they smelled cigarette smoke. Almost every Filipino Lam had seen had been smoking. It seemed to be a national craze. Big Tobacco in the U.S. must be chortling.
They went into the brush away from the river and moved through the jungle slower, but safer. The smokers were at a guard post astride the trail. No camouflage, just two big logs that it would take five grown men to move across the trail. The rebels in green shirts and civilian pants sat on the logs. Each one had a rifle. Lam couldn’t tell what kind they were, but they were all alike. He guessed they were AK- 47’s or maybe the new AK-74’s. Either one was deadly.
“We could take them all out before they got off a shot,” Juan said.
“Easy, Juan. We can come back and get them later. Let’s get some intel for Murdock. We want the whole package. Maybe they have the hostages here.”