And as he circled above them, they looked skyward, grief-stricken, watching him ascend to another place.
Chapter 60
Abe watched with amazement the execution of the ambush. If only he could play a role. He felt his hands reaching for a weapon, pulling an invisible trigger, and delighting in the kill. What kind of transformation was he experiencing? he wondered. Was it something primal?
Suddenly, he heard footsteps in the darkness. The major had told him that no one friendly would be moving unless he saw a green star cluster. None had been fired. Without hesitation, he pulled the rope twice, watching five bodies pass him on either side. One stopped, cocking his head to one side like an alert deer, then proceeded.
Ramsey felt the tug and turned in Abe’s direction. He could see dark outlines moving quietly along through the trees, as if they were looking. They passed him. He had not been firing. They had not noticed a muzzle flash from his direction. Then he saw a dark figure stop only three meters away, turning his head slowly in Ramsey’s direction.
Chuck leveled his hush-puppy pistol in the man’s direction, hoping it was not Abe, and pumped a single, silent shot into the chest of the man, who fell backward into the bushes.
He sensed the others stop and turn. They came back to the shot man and he fired another bullet at a rebel who was bending over to check on the first. Then he sensed at least two had moved to his left, on his downhill side. His position was between two trees. Quickly, he backed away, and the three enemy soldiers converged on one another. One screamed in pain, apparently at a knife wound. The other two leapt directly at him, knocking his pistol to the ground.
Ramsey grabbed his K-Bar knife out of its sheath as he felt the hot steel of an enemy knife pierce his left arm. He screamed in agony, thrusting his knife into the innards of one of the men on top of him, turning the blade back and forth like a fork collecting spaghetti. Pushing away, he saw a man, older than he, wearing a bush hat poised above him ready to end his life.
“Americans?” the voice said.
“Die, scumbag,” Ramsey said, trying to throw the man off him with no success. Talbosa held down Ramsey’s good arm while his wounded arm lay helpless at his side.
“No, my friend. This is a great victory for my people. We will parade your stinking bodies down Roxas Boulevard. Bin Laden will give us money. America will suffer,” Talbosa said, smiling.
Ramsey spit tobacco in his face. Talbosa raised his right arm, the knife silhouetted against the dark sky.
Three shots from the hush-puppy knocked Talbosa off Ramsey. Bursts of machine-gun fire suddenly erupted all around the two men. The tracers and muzzle flashes lit the night sky like strobes. Gaining visual acuity was difficult, and Ramsey sensed that Talbosa was no longer next to him. Staying low to avoid elevating into the cross fire, Ramsey low-crawled through the elephant grass.
Talbosa was gone. Grasping at the grass to his left and right, he touched a foot, then a leg.
The fire abated and Ramsey rose to one knee as Abe helped him to his feet. Looking up, Ramsey saw Abe’s face highlighted by the weak moon. He looked at Abe’s hand, holding the hush-puppy pistol. With a calm demeanor, Abe looked down at the weapon, then at Ramsey.
“Why this thing make no noise?”
The moment was almost comical. Then Abe moved to one knee and lifted an Australian bush hat from the grass. He held it in his hand without commenting as he stood again.
“That man, with the hat, where did he go?”
Abe and Zach were both without night-vision goggles and therefore could not search the darkness with any advantage.
“Ran. Like the wind. Not find. Need to get you a medic.”
The ambush had slowed in intensity, producing an occasional pop from a friendly weapon. No tracers burned in the sky. There was only the collective moan of wounded bodies. Chuck stood eye to eye with Abe, grabbed his pistol, and said, “Thank you.” But then he had to kneel again. His wounds were worse perhaps than he had initially believed.
He still had a fight to command, however, and people to protect. He found his rucksack, which had been riddled with bullets. He cringed when he found the radio shattered inside. The green star cluster was still serviceable, though, and he promptly sent it screaming into the air. He handed Abe his rucksack, and said, “Please.”
Abe was happy to help. He flipped Ramsey’s rucksack onto his back, fitted the Australian bush hat onto his head and started up the mountain.
Chapter 61
Matt Garrett looked at Bart Rathburn and Jack Sturgeon. He was thankful that he was practiced enough that he had brought no identification materials and truly looked like a security guard. To his knowledge, none of the rank-and-file insurgents had connected that they had a CIA operative in captivity. They were focused on Rathburn, with all of his important-looking badges. Sucks to be him, Matt thought. So far, Matt had not been questioned; nor had any apparent leader presented himself.
Matt was squatting on his haunches in the corner of a dank cellar with adobe walls and a thin green slime of mildew and mold along the dirt floor. So far he had killed one snake and four rats. He should have just let the snake live, he thought; maybe it would have eaten the rats.
Their Filipino captors had stripped them of their weapons, rifles, pistols, and knives, and dumped them unceremoniously into this basement. When they removed their blindfolds and restraints, Matt noticed that there was a large Native-American-looking man sitting in the muck on the far wall. The man opened his half-lidded eyes when the three of them had appeared in his heretofore solitary cell. Just as quickly, he closed them, as if retreating back into some sanctuary.
Matt noticed Rathburn and Sturgeon were visibly shaken, though the pilot seemed like he could handle himself. Rathburn was a different story altogether. The guy was coming unglued, Matt realized. Sturgeon was leaning against one shoulder in the far corner as if he might be twirling a toothpick in his mouth at the local soda fountain. Rathburn was pacing back and forth looking at the floor and muttering to himself like Rain Man.
“Gotta call Mick Jagger. If he can’t help, Ronnie Wood is the man. The man, you know what I’m saying? This is Mick’s doing, I know. You know? If not Mick, then for sure Ronnie. You know what I’m saying?”
Matt walked across the slimy surface and stopped Rathburn by placing a hand on his shoulder. Rathburn spun wildly, which caused Matt to snatch his wrist and hold it.
“Actually, no. I don’t know what you’re saying,” Matt said. He looked at Rathburn’s eyes, wild with fright. Flight-or-fight syndrome, Matt thought. This bureaucrat has no fight in him, for sure.
“Jagger’s screwed up somehow. This wasn’t part of the plan,” he said to Matt, as if Matt should understand exactly what he was saying.
“They took my iPod. I had some Stones,” Sturgeon said, providing a bit of levity to the scenario.
“The Stones, man. We are the Rolling Stones, and this thing happened too soon,” Rathburn said.
Matt noticed that the political appointee had the thousand-yard stare of a man who knew he was going to die soon. His vacant look indicated a man whose eyes were searching for reason but coming up empty. Imagining the worst and trying to find a plausible scenario to escape the treachery that surely waited, Rathburn was spiraling out of control.