Orestes, the guard, greeted Espiritu with a cheery good morning. He was a solidly built youth of no more than 19. His equipment consisted of a water bottle and an M-16 rifle. His eyes looked sleepy.
“Long night, Orestes?” Espiritu asked.
The boy grinned and nodded.
“I just noticed that young stand of bamboo — down the path there.” Espiritu pointed. Orestes turned to look.
“Think someone could sneak up the path and use it for cover?”
“I don’t know.”
“Let’s take a look.”
The three of them went down the path for ten yards, Espiritu in the lead, until they reached the bamboo. It was a small stand and far from mature. Espiritu studied it for a moment and said, “Let’s see what it looks like from the other side.”
Stallings and Orestes followed him around the bamboo, which now shielded the three of them from the compound. Espiritu backed up a few steps, as if for a better look. Orestes stared up at the bamboo and yawned. He was still yawning when Espiritu landed on his back, clamped a left hand over the still open mouth, and slashed Orestes’ throat twice with a right hand that held a kitchen paring knife.
Espiritu rode the guard to the ground, left hand still clamped around the dying boy’s mouth. After making sure he was dead, Espiritu wiped the knife blade on the boy’s shirt and rose slowly, breathing in short harsh gasps. The hand with the knife, the right one, was rock steady. The left hand trembled. Some drool had formed in the left corner of his mouth and he absently licked it away.
“Jesus Christ, Al,” Stallings said as he bent to pick up the guard’s fallen M-16.
“What should I have done? Just nicked him a little?”
When Stallings made no answer, Espiritu held out his trembling left hand for the M-16. “I’ll take that,” he said.
“The fuck you will,” Booth Stallings said.
At 6:45 that morning Otherguy Overby sat in his rented gray Toyota, waiting for the owner of the small auto repair garage to show up. The owner arrived at 6:59 A.M. in an aging four-wheel-drive Jeep whose enclosed cab looked homemade.
Overby got out of the Toyota and walked over to the garage owner. They walked around the Jeep together. Overby kicked two tires, nodded, reached into a pocket and handed over a roll of bills. The garage owner counted them rapidly. After he counted them again, more slowly this time, he gave Overby the key to the Jeep. Overby said something to the owner and indicated his parked Toyota sedan. The owner nodded indifferently. Overby climbed into the Jeep, started its engine, backed out of the garage drive and drove off.
By 7:18 A.M., Overby was again standing at the counter of the Orange Brutus fruit juice stand on Jones Avenue, breakfasting on coffee, juice and two freshly baked rolls. He was joined at 7:20 by Carmen Espiritu. She drank a single cup of coffee while Overby finished his second roll. They spoke only a few words. Both wore running shoes and blue jeans. His looked almost new; hers were old and faded. Above his jeans Overby wore a tan loose-fitting short-sleeved bush shirt with six pockets. She wore a dark blue cotton blouse with long sleeves. The blouse was buttoned to her neck.
At 7:30 A.M., Overby looked at his watch and said something to Carmen Espiritu. She reached down to pick up the woven fiber reticule at her feet. It seemed heavy, but Overby didn’t offer to carry it. They walked to the rented Jeep and got in. Overby started the engine and drove off in the direction of the Guadalupe Mountains.
At 8:00 A.M., Artie Wu drove the blue Nissan van he had just rented from Avis up to the entrance of the Magellan Hotel where Quincy Durant and Georgia Blue waited. The van was the panel kind with no side windows.
Georgia Blue climbed into the van and sat next to Artie Wu. Durant slid back a side panel, lifted a cardboard box the size of a beer case into the van and climbed in after it, sliding the panel shut.
The van rolled out of the Magellan Hotel drive and turned west, heading toward the Guadalupe Mountains.
The retired Colonel lay on his 67-year-old stomach 13 miles west of Cebu City. He lay on a low ridge dotted with coconut palms, clumps of bamboo, lush ferns, at least four kinds of orchids and a dozen fine dipterocarp trees that somehow had escaped the woodman’s ax. Vaughn Crouch lay there, staring down at the small stream that was spanned by a crudely built bamboo bridge. The bridge was point B on the rough map Artie Wu had given him.
The ridge on the other side of the stream was higher than the one Crouch lay on by at least 15 meters — maybe even 20, he decided. The opposite ridge also afforded excellent cover, thus making the bridge and the stream it crossed, in Crouch’s opinion, prime ambush property. He smiled, thinking of Booth Stallings. Well, Lieutenant, you sure must’ve learned something about bushwhacking from all those months you and old Al spent in these hills. Because you sure as shit picked us a doozy.
The big 23-year-old Filipino mercenary that Crouch had promoted, almost on sight, to unofficial first sergeant, flopped down beside him, breathing hard from his climb up and down the two ridges.
“Get ’em all in place?” Crouch asked.
The first sergeant nodded, not wanting to waste breath on speech.
“Two hours on, two hours off?”
Again, the mercenary nodded and managed a yes.
“Same thing on this side, understand?”
“Sure.”
“How d’you like it?” Crouch asked, giving the bridge and the stream a pleased nod. “Think it’ll work?”
“Fuckin’ A,” the first sergeant said.
Crouch nodded his agreement, sat up and scooted backward until he could lean against the bole of a coconut palm. He pulled the blue gimme cap down low over his eyes, rested his right hand on his holstered .45-caliber semiautomatic, dropped his chin to his chest and told the first sergeant to wake him in two hours.
After 129 minutes of hard steady walking it was Booth Stallings who called for a stop. Only minutes after killing the guard, Espiritu abandoned the well-traveled path that led past the young stand of bamboo, and had taken what Stallings thought of as a goat track that headed down and mostly east.
Espiritu stopped and looked back. “You’re soft, Booth.”
“Not soft. Old.”
“It’s not far now.”
“How far’s not far?”
“Another two kilometers. Perhaps three.”
Stallings used his already soaked handkerchief to mop sweat from his face. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”
It took them another 23 minutes to reach the stopping place, which was just below a barren rocky ridge. The goat track they had been following suddenly broadened into a steep rutted path that hugged the ridge’s side.
“We stop here,” Espiritu said.
Stallings looked around, not liking what he saw. “Couldn’t you have picked something with shade?”
“I picked something better than shade,” said Espiritu with a grin that Stallings thought knocked ten years off his age. “I chose air-conditioning.” Espiritu gestured. “Just look around.”
Stallings looked around, saw nothing of interest and shook his head.
“You’re not only soft, Booth, but you’ve lost your eye and your memory’s in rotten shape. You’ve been here before, you know.”
Stallings looked around again but there was no recollection in his expression. “I give up.”
“Crab meat,” Espiritu said.
It came back to Stallings then, not in a flood, but in indistinct bits and pieces. It was like trying to remember an indifferent dream. He looked up, scanning the ridge carefully, and saw it — a black, irregularly shaped hole the size of an automobile tire.
“It was bigger then,” he said. “Christ, it was ten times as big.”
“We filled in the entrance,” Espiritu said. “Come on.”