“What do you make of all that gunfire?” Rath-burn asked Matt.
“Sounds like a combat zone,” Matt said, stepping outside with his weapon at the ready.
“Up in the tower I could see Army trucks going everywhere. Green and orange tracers too.”
The staccato sounds of small-arms fire continued, growing louder. Suddenly Matt thought about the women on the airplane and that he should probably have them join the men in the terminal. Best to keep everyone together.
As Matt jogged back on to the runway, he watched as a colorful truck with several hood ornaments drove along the runway and stopped less than fifty meters from their airplane.
Three men poured from the back of the red truck and set up RPG launchers on their shoulders, aiming them at the Gulfstream. Standing on the tarmac, screaming, “No!” Matt leveled his weapon on the gunners as three rocket-propelled grenades left smoking vapor trails flying from their launchers and impacted into a wing and the side of the airplane.
The fuel tank in the wing exploded with a bright orange fury that immediately began to spew flames and black smoke skyward. On either side of the wing, the grenades pierced the thin sheet metal and exploded beyond their impact points inside the passenger cabin. Matt knelt as he fired into the attackers. The heat from the fireballs that erupted pushed him back and, as he turned, he thought he could see people, women, running desperately down the aisle. Their movement was visible through the elongated series of windows as in some B movie as they tried to escape what was now a blazing inferno. Moments later, the aircraft exploded in an enormous eruption, billowing black smoke.
Matt sensed someone behind him, spun to his left, and swept his rearward attacker’s feet off the ground. In a swift movement, he punched the small man in the stomach hard while grabbing the pistol with another hand. He noticed a knife moving to his side as he turned the pistol into the face of his initial attacker and shot him point-blank.
Sidestepping the lame thrust of a second attacker, Matt spun the now-dead rebel who had been holding the pistol into the path of the next insurgent.
“Hey, Joe, put down the pistol, no?”
“No,” Matt said, then stopped when he realized what had occurred.
Two insurgents were holding Rathburn and Sturgeon by the neck, with knives pressing into their carotid arteries.
“Drop the gun, or we kill these Joes.”
Matt sized up his predicament. He could really care less about Rathburn, a Beltway lightweight, but he presumed the man had a family. Sturgeon did have a family and actually seemed like a decent guy. Matt eyed a total of four Filipinos, Abu Sayyaf, he assumed. Two were holding Rathburn and Sturgeon. One was talking to him from the same vicinity near the door to the terminal, and one was standing near him with a knife and pistol aimed at him.
Really, he thought, I could make quick work of these clowns if they didn’t have knives ready to slice through Rathburn’s and Sturgeon’s necks.
“Let them go, and I’ll drop the weapon,” Matt directed.
“You think we stupid, Joe?”
“My name’s not Joe, dipshit, now let them go,” Matt ordered again.
“Okay, watch this, Joe,” the man holding Sturgeon commanded as he removed the knife from Sturgeon’s neck and lifted it high.
Before he brought it down, Matt fired a single bullet into the man’s head. Sturgeon quickly lifted the arm of the man holding Rathburn, hoping to use the surprise that Matt had created to their advantage. It worked.
Another shot, and Matt had killed the insurgent who had been holding Rathburn.
As he turned toward the attacker closest to him, a shot rang out from the distance, felling the man. Quickly, though, Matt realized that the bullet was intended for him and not the insurgent as two truckloads of wild-eyed rebels poured from the backs of Jeepneys.
Matt lifted his hands, as did Rathburn and Sturgeon when they saw the M4s and AK-47s aimed at them. Soon, several insurgents were upon them, pushing them onto the concrete and taping their eyes and mouths shut along with tying kite string around their hands and feet.
“How’s this, Joe?” the Filipino said just before ramming the sharp toe of a boot into Matt’s rib cage. He heard an audible pop and felt a deep pain in his ribs. Immediately he knew he had at least two broken ribs and possibly a bruised lung. Another kick in the same location made him sure about the lung; he could only pray it was not punctured. He could sense people walking quickly all around him. He heard many loud shouts on the tarmac, men he presumed celebrating their wily destruction of an airplane and the deaths of some American women.
The kicking had stopped, but the concrete ground pressed against his bruised side, making his breathing difficult. When he tried to roll over to his left side, his shoulder screamed with pain and a hand grabbed a clump of his hair as a foot slammed down on his neck. Feeling the steel of a weapon against his temple, Matt heard a voice say, “I kill you, Joe.”
The man seemed happy that he was in control. Matt knew intuitively that it was the voice of an Abu Sayyaf rebel. When they spoke Tagalog among one another, he was certain of it.
“What do we do with the Yankees? Kill them?”
“Magsaysay. Kill one by one. Get information, put on television. Use reporter’s equipment.”
Matt listened to this exchange. He knew Fort Magsaysay was in the central highlands of Luzon Province, about a four-hour drive from Manila, on a good day.
The rebels walked the men toward the airplane. Matt could feel the heat licking his face, making him sweat in the already-boiling morning. Their captors forced them to lie down in the bed of a truck. Matt surmised that it was the same truck that had escorted the rebels who had attacked the airplane.
The searing pain in Matt’s shoulder never dulled as he began calculating how he was going to kill his captors.
The one time I hang out with a bureaucrat and this happens, Matt steamed. He closed his eyes and endured the long, bumpy ride.
Chapter 39
The blades from the medevac UH-60 rapped against the humid morning air, the aircraft hovering above the landing pad of the U.S. embassy in Manila. The landing area was a white concrete slab atop the three-story redbrick building surrounded by black wrought-iron-gated fences.
The embassy was in the heart of Manila on Roxas Boulevard and had a sweeping view of the horseshoe-shaped Manila Bay to its west, across Roxas. Palm trees lined the bay, obviously planted and not growing wild, framing the beach and water like a portrait.
Two marines guarded the front door, which was nearly fifty meters beyond a high brick wall with a black iron gate that prevented locals from gaining access to the compound. The Joint U.S. Military Advisory Group had a skeletal team of ten military personnel assigned: Fraley, two Marine Corps guards, an Army major, a doctor, and the medevac crew. The ambassador was in charge of these men who all contributed to the overall effort on what was called the country team.
Inside the embassy was an operations center where the country team had two satellite-capable radio systems. Maps of the major islands hung on the walls, plotting movements of Abu Sayyaf units and hot spots of activity.
As Major Hewit and Lieutenant Rockingham stood atop the embassy roof and watched the medevac helicopter hovering above the landing pad, Hewit wondered where they had gone wrong. A firefight at Subic Bay, fighting in the streets, and they could not contact Major Ramsey’s Special Forces team.