Zachary had both arms around Mosconi, who lay unconscious and maybe dead. With one hand, he grabbed Rockingham’s arm to give him support.
Rockingham looked at him with the blank eyes of a wounded deer. He knew then that the XO had been hit in the back with a bullet. Bullets zipped past and into the frame of the laboring aircraft. Sergeant Spencer grabbed Rockingham’s other arm. Soon, both arms went limp, and Rockingham’s eyes retreated into a world where there would be no pain. His body became deadweight against the pull of Zachary and Spencer.
With sudden alarm and shock, they realized their friend was dead. Hanging on, Spencer and Garrett looked at each other, trying to hold back their emotions. But they were only human.
Uncertainly, the pilot banked the machine hard to the left, diving below the level of the building to avoid the fire, and sped low along Roxas Boulevard with too much weight and too little time. They headed to the only safe place for an American in the Philippines — Garrett’s Gulch.
Chapter 41
Chuck Ramsey and his Special Forces team had been on the run for four days. The steep, jagged mountains had proved both a blessing and an enemy. Even these hardened men were having problems sustaining the rate of march necessary to elude Talbosa’s Abu Sayyaf cell.
Ramsey stopped and looked down into the steep ravine. Can we make it? A few days ago, he would not have doubted it. Today, his men standing in single file behind him, panting, he was unsure.
“Take five, men,” Ramsey told them. Despite their exhaustion, they moved to either side of their route and turned outward, each man taking a knee. They pulled their canteens out of their pouches and drank heavily. Every man was dehydrated. The heat had intensified during the last four days. The only respite was a gully washer, as Ramsey had called it. The near-monsoon-level rains had drenched his team and the Japanese man for hours, making them cold and miserable through the night. But the next day had brought forth the same burning, searing sun, and soon they were longing for the cool rain again. They needed water badly.
Ramsey knew he had to find a river for his men to refill their canteens. They still had plenty of water purification tablets to make the river water acceptable. More importantly, though, they needed to find a way to establish communications. He felt like he was carrying a deep secret that the world needed to know. He had the key to something, he was not quite sure what. While he had grown to tolerate Abe, he seriously doubted the man’s story. Although it was plausible that the United States would be rearming the Armed Forces of the Philip-pines, he doubted that they would fund Japanese factories to do so. He had to make contact with somebody who could relay the message.
Anybody!
Kneeling on both knees, he leaned back, stretching his weary back muscles. His sixty-pound ruck was beginning to feel like an appendage to his body. He didn’t bother to take it off. To put the weight back on again would somehow be demoral-izing.
He gazed over some scrub. The ravine was about a sixty-degree drop with no trails. High tropical trees gave way to dense undergrowth and rocks. The terrain pitched deep into a narrow bottom that ran east toward the ocean.
Ramsey grabbed his two-quart canteen and took a long pull. The water was warm. Must be a hundred degrees out here. He was right. As he drank, he could feel his body rehydrate. Immediately his pores spewed forth sweat in an attempt to cool his scorching skin, only to have the beaming sun lick the moisture away.
Looking over his shoulder, he saw Benson turning his canteen up to the Japanese man’s mouth. Water spilled over the edges of his dry, chapped lips as he gulped. Earlier, he had his men remove the tape from Abe’s eyes and mouth. It only made sense. He was a healthy, but gentle man. He would do them no harm and would not last a day in the jungle if he escaped.
Abe’s story was unbelievable. Ramsey asked him repeatedly if they really were manufacturing tanks and helicopters in the plant. He always responded that they were indeed. Abe insisted that the American government was footing the bill, as they had done for Japan’s defense needs for so many years.
But the rub, according to Abe — an obviously bright man — was that America was doing this because they needed help in the Global War on Terror and wanted Japan to maintain stronger defenses. To Ramsey, it made no sense. Tanks and helicopters were not the best tools of the trade in fighting an idea such as radical Islam. The question Ramsey considered was, Why would the Japanese be building and stockpiling weapons on Mindanao?
In the Philippines?
Ramsey looked at Abe, kneeling in the thick jungle vines, looking exhausted with his eyes fixed on the ground at his feet. He had kind eyes and a smooth face. His hands were not the hands of a warrior. Rather, they were soft and delicate like those of a lawyer or executive. Ramsey had made him burn the orange jump suit and given him one of his own extra uniforms. It was a bit large, but served the purpose. Abe, in his running shoes and camouflaged jungle fatigues, reminded him of a soldier with some sort of foot ailment who had received a “no physical training profile” from the doctor. But Abe had proven to be in excellent condition. His stamina was lacking, but he could keep up with the group.
From the rear of the patrol, Benson came slithering through the elephant grass quickly. He carried a concerned look in his eyes.
“Sir, we’ve got movement to our rear,” he said. Immediately, the team fanned into an L- shaped ambush, with Ramsey at the corner so he could control any engagement. Crouching low in the two-meter-high elephant grass, he could still see nearly a hundred meters along the path they had bored through the dense rain forest.
He saw it. There was movement toward them, following the trail they had inadvertently made. Ramsey could see no one but Eddie, who was kneeling and watching next to him. He peered through his binoculars, seeing only the undergrowth move. As his rising adrenaline level made his stomach twist into a knot, he felt a dry copper taste in the back of his mouth. He was tired. He was hungry. Perversely, he thought of all of the Vietnam movies he had seen in which soldiers shot at water buffalo thinking they were enemy. While he did not expect any water buffalo that high in the rain forest, nothing could really have surprised him.
Eddie motioned to him for the binoculars. He had grown quite confident and comfortable with the group. He wanted to make a contribution and had done so on many occasions. While Chuck still painfully mourned the loss of his best friend, Ron Peterson, he was glad that Eddie had happened along. He handed the glasses to Eddie, who placed them to his eyes.
The standard plan for a hasty ambush was first to try to avoid detection. Chuck figured they would use silenced weapons to the fullest extent possible to avoid further detection. His least preferred option was a conventional, loud ambush. For sure, the patrol would be lethally compromised.
Chuck handled his father’s Navy SEAL “hush puppy” with ease, rolling it back in forth in his hand, venting some nervous tension. The Smith and Wesson Model 39 pistol was modified with a noise suppressor. Used by the SEALs in Vietnam to kill sentries and guard dogs, the weapon’s range was limited to 100 meters. But it was quiet.
The back of his throat was dusty. Is it the Abu Sayyaf? They’ve been following us for days. Must be them. How many? Silently, he wished for a water buffalo instead of what he thought was coming.